


Dog-Eared Page

by objectlesson



Category: Descendants (2015)
Genre: Angst, Flashbacks, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Light Ben/Carlos, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Mostly Jaylos, Sexuality Crisis, Teenage confusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-21
Packaged: 2018-04-29 13:32:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5129492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe there will be so many beautiful boys in Auradon, Carlos can effectively forget about Jay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this story has a wildly different tone from my last Descendants fic. I thought it was appropriate considering the subject and themes in this one are a little more serious (general teenage confusion about relationships and sexuality and whatnot.) It's also a lot longer, and a lot more angsty. That being said, I'm pretty sure it's gonna have a happyish ending, so I hope everyone sticks around until then! 
> 
> I haven't read the Isle of the Lost books so I apologize if anything from the Isle flashbacks doesn't make sense. Thanks for reading!

Carlos doesn’t say so to his friends, but part of him is _excited_ to visit Auradon, to see what lies beyond the stretch of water separating their world from his. It’s the part of him that’s not consumed with anxiety every time he remembers that there are dogs there, packs of them ready to chase him down and tear him to pieces. But if he pushes that aside, just for a moment, he feels a shameful thrill spike to life in his chest. 

The truth is that Carlos _hates_ being the son of a villain. He _hates_ knowing he will likely grow from the son of a villain into a villain himself, as joyfully cruel as his mother, the whole of his life mapped out ahead of him in a series of crimes and casualties. Though it’s easy to play the part, to sidle though the alleyways of the Isle swiping food and kicking over collection tins with his friends, Carlos doesn’t _feel_ good doing it. It’s an act, a dance. Carlos is a good actor and a better dancer, but he’s still always worried that he’ll get caught, that his ambivalence will show through his seams, seeping in like mud through cracks in old pavement. 

He fears that over time his friends will recognize that he’s an impostor. He fears especially that _Jay_ will figure him him out, discover that his core is perhaps not as rotten as he lets on, and dispose of him like a shirt that’s too small. Carlos can think of few things worse than Jay disposing of him. 

As the chauffeur in his pressed, tailored suit begins delivering Carlos and his friends from the Isle and across the sea, Carlos reminds himself that they’re not in Auradon to stay. They don’t belong there; they never will. They’re just slipping in so Mal can steal the wand, please her mother, continue brilliantly along her path of corruption. Mal is good at this; she always has been, but sometimes Carlos sees the same desperate, fear-stricken longing for something different in her eyes as he does in his own when he gazes critically upon himself in his mother’s vanity mirror. Maybe Mal is acting the same part, dancing the same dance. Maybe she’s just better at concealing it. 

\---

There are lots of things Carlos wonders about Auradon. Like maybe there are hundreds of beautiful boys there, golden boys, heroes and princes so clean and good he can hardly imagine them in all their glory. Maybe there will be so many boys he can stop obsessing so pathetically and unrequitedly about the one boy he’s stuck with, the one he’s agonized over for so many years the formerly acute pain of it has edged out to a dull and constant ache. Maybe there will be so many beautiful boys in Auradon, Carlos can effectively forget about Jay. 

\---

Prince Ben meets them at the gates of Auradon prep, and Carlos’s mouth goes dry. Naturally, the king-to-be is so handsome it’s unfair, all blonde and sun-kissed and wind-tousled and smiling, the kind of boy who comes out of the ocean dripping gold, the kind of boy who looks perfect spread out on white sheets, looks perfect wearing a crown. Carlos cringes on the behalf of his friends, who are grossly transparent. Evie twirls her hair and lets her voice get high and sticky sweet. Mal is mean and scathing, emulating the bite of her Mother’s words like she thought them up herself. He makes himself intentionally deaf to whatever Jay says, because he doesn’t _want_ to think about Jay right now. He wants to think of sun and wind and gold and white sheets. He wants to be a different person, just for this moment. 

But Carlos has never been very good at blocking Jay’s voice out, and he isn’t a different person, he’s the same filthy thing he’s always been, a scrawny street rat with bruises from his mother’s rings hidden beneath his jackets on bad says. As they shake hands, Ben’s eyes linger on Carlos’s lips for a few seconds. He’s stunned and breathless and confused over it until Jay reminds him later he has chocolate all over his mouth, and _that’s_ why. No magic, no beauty, no prince to save him from a whole history of hiding and thieving and lying, and its Jay who reminds him of it. Jay who hit on Ben’s girlfriend so obviously Carlos’s stomach is still sick with secondhand embarrassment and something else, Jay who always ruins everything. Jay who Carlos will probably never be able to forget, no matter how many glittering waves they cross, no matter how many beautiful boys in Auradon.    
\---

The truth is, Carlos has been in love (or something like it) with Jay for almost as long as he’s known him. Since they met when he was eleven and Jay was a magnetic and fascinating thirteen, brown from running through the streets of the Isle stealing for his father’s shop, pockets overflowing, face twisted into a brilliant smirk as he reached for Carlos’s hair and ruffled it decidedly. Jay called him _De Vil_ for a whole four months before ever using his first name, and when he finally did say it, it felt like a revelation. Carlos remembers the wild thrum of his heart, the feeling of finally being recognized, appreciated, deemed worthy. 

Carlos was always tagging along behind Jay, gleefully playing the part of the poor lost child with his dark doe eyes and knobby knees so adults would bend down in concern, while Jay snuck up behind them and picked their pockets. It made him feel _useful_ , far more useful than he ever felt around his mother, who loved to tell him what a terrific and expensive burden he was. Well aware of Cruella’s negligence, Jay was fiercely protective of Carlos, allowing him to sleep on a straw pallet in the shop on more than one occasion, sneaking him rolls and apples he nicked from a merchant’s food cart, once slugging the oldest Tremaine boy in the face when he put Carlos in a headlock and called him princess. 

_No one calls him that but me_ , Jay had snarled, eyes flashing and knuckles bruised, a whole head shorter than Tremaine at the time. Carlos watched the scene from where he sat sprawled in the gutter, rubbing his newly bleeding nose and moved beyond words that someone was standing up for him, someone like Jay, with his bronze skin and treacherous smile and endless entourage of tittering girls all fawning over him, Jay who was brave and funny and handsome and cunning. What began as boyish admiration grew rapidly to infatuation, and then into something deeper, fiercer, more enduring, and now, here Carlos is. Mired in his swamp of fruitless feelings that will never go anywhere. 

Carlos is hesitant to call whatever it is he feels for Jay love, because he doesn’t think he knows what love really is, how to do it. His mother certainly never taught him, not with her clatter of empty bottles and voice forever barbed around insults. Anyway, who’s to say Carlos isn’t just taken with Jay because he’s the only flicker of gold amid filth and sadness? Who’s to say Carlos will still shine once he’s held against the glow of so many princes? Who’s to say Jay is brave and funny and handsome and cunning at all? Maybe he’s just the best thing about a terrible place. 

Carlos resents Jay as much as he cares about him. It’s the stupidest thing. Carlos wishes he could shake it, just peel it from him like a layer of wet clothing and find himself naked and new underneath, free of his feelings for Jay, but it’s impossible. Whatever it is is lies beneath his skin, unsheddable, so he lives with it. Most days he’s content to just be Jay’s best friend, the person who knows more about him than anyone else in the world, at least. Other days, he’s not. Especially when Jay _messes_ with him. 

\---

Their first night in Auradon, Jay gets drunk or some acidic, bright blue liquor he stole off a boy down their hall. When they sneak back into their dorm he immediately collapses onto his bed and sprawls out with his pants unbuckled and shucked halfway down to his knees, pouring himself shots into his water bottle and chasing them with candy. Twenty minutes later he’s slurring and red-faced, littering his brand new sheets with wrappers and going on and on about how useless and terrible he is for sabotaging their mission. 

Carlos rolls his eyes but quits playing his video game to come sit on the edge of the bed. “Look man, it wasn’t your fault. Any one of us could have done something like that, it’s ok. It was our first try,” Carlos tells him, wanting to reach out and pat his arm or something, but then thinking better of it. He’s sick of Jay pushing him off, which he’s been doing a lot tonight. Instead his hand hangs in awkward limbo, hovering a few inches away from Jay’s skin, unnoticed, until it falls to the bed. 

“No,” Jay slurs, too loud, shaking his head so fiercely some hair comes loose from his lazy bun. “It was _definitely_ all me. My dad’s gonna kill me, you can’t tell him I fucked up.” 

Carlos bites his lip, irritated by Jay’s drunk person logic. He doesn’t know why Jay thinks he’d _ever_ tell his dad anything; ever since Jafar caught Carlos sleeping in the shop during one of his mother’s lengthier episodes and chased him out with a broom, Carlos avoids him at all cost. Regardless, he shakes his head reassuringly. “Ok, don’t worry about it, Jay. I won’t tell anyone.” 

Jay sighs dramatically. “You’re _way_ too good for me, man. Dunno why you hang out with me,” he mumbles, rolling away from Carlos and burying his face into the pillow, candy wrappers crunching under his weight.

“Stop, of course I’m not too good for you,” Carlos groans. He hates when Jay says stuff like that, stuff that’s so _unfair,_ so conditional. He sighs, screwing his forehead up and rubbing the crease between his brows, exhausted. He just wants to go to bed; Jay is confusing and inconsolable and this has possibly been one of the longest and most exciting days of his life.

“Are too,” Jay says. “I’m a shitty villain and a shittier friend,” he argues. He sits up clumsily, unbuckling and yanking off his boots, which he lets clatter to the floor into an unceremonious heap. “And we’re gonna have to _stay_ in this shitty place all because of me.” 

Carlos watches him undress, too tried to make himself look away, to force his eyes to some safer corner of the room. He blinks, and backs away slowly to his own bed, wondering how many more times Jay is gonna say the word _shitty_ before he passes out, how many more articles of clothing he’s gonna take off before he remembers that Carlos is still in the room and is probably in love with him. He clears his throat as Jay starts on his pants, then watches his hands still as he thinks better of it. “It’s not that bad here,” Carlos offers, eyes cutting to the floor. “There’s wi-fi. And clean water and stuff.” 

“Yeah,” Jay murmurs, kicking off his pants and flopping back down to the bed in nothing but a worn and tattered pair of boxers. “I guess. Clean water and hot princesses.” He pulls his pillow over his face, muffling a dull groan with it. 

Carlos’s stomach flips over predictably. “Right,” he answers, making sure Jay’s face is still buried in his pillow so he can shuck his own clothes in favor of PJs. After flicking the light off he slides into bed, sighing at the miraculous sensation of clean cotton sheets and a soft mattress, things he’s not even sure exist back on the island. Auradon Prep is definitely not _all_ bad. 

Carlos is moments away from drifting off to sleep when he hears his name in Jay’s voice, harsh, whining, unmistakable. He flinches awake, heart hammering. “Carlos?” Jay asks. Then, closer and accompanied by an alarming creak in Carlos’s mattress, “I can’t sleep.” 

Carlos makes a face no one can see in the dark, hands curling into fists. It’s been awhile since this has happened, and he almost forgot how terrifying it is. Mattress bowing under his knees, Jay lets himself into Carlos’s bed, clumsy and radiating heat as he clambers in alongside him, blind in the dark. Carlos winces, hiding his face in his hands. This wouldn’t be the first time Jay got into his bed with him, too drunk to make excuses or remember it properly in the morning. It’s a habit, a bad one. Carlos suspects it’s because Jay is well aware of his inability to say no to him, his complete and total lack of self-preservation or dignity when it comes to what little Jay is willing to give him. 

He grits his teeth, shutting his eyes tight as Jay crowds him, pressing his chest to Carlos’s spine, breath hot and boozy and sugar-sweet in his ear. He smells like peanut butter cups, like liquor and red vines and danger and Carlos can’t stand it; Jay feels too good for him to resist, too good to push off or pull away from. Carlos whimpers, arching back against the solidity of Jay’s body as he pins him down to the bed with his hips, grinding and rucking uselessly against him, probably too drunk to come, but trying anyway. He mouths over Carlos’s face, his neck, his hair, but never his lips. This is the way it is, the way it’s been forever. It’s beyond confusing and it leaves Carlos wrecked, but he doesn’t know how to stop it. He doesn’t even know if he _wants_ to stop it. 

Carlos struggles to breathe, drooling onto his new sheets and thrusting messily, dizzy with Jay’s scent, his weight, the whole of him heavy and sweat-damp and shifting against his back. He wants it to go on forever, and hates himself for wanting such a stupid, shameful thing. He knows Jay doesn’t think of him as anything other than a friend, a little brother, someone warm and willing and convenient to rub himself off on when he’s drunk and feeling the inescapable ache of self-hatred. It hurts, and it’s not exactly what he wants from Jay, but he’ll take what he can get. 

Jay gets tense and sloppy and finishes with a low groan, hand locked vice-tight on Carlos’s bicep, teeth scraping against his pulse. Then he rolls off, and as simple as that, it’s over. Carlos lies still, arm throbbing and cock so hard it hurts, heart beating fast and wild as he waits for Jay to say what he always says whenever this happens, which is an awkward and half-hearted apology. It comes, muffled and slurred. “Sorry, dude,” he says. “I’m sorry.” 

Carlos doesn’t always answer, but tonight he says, “It’s ok,” voice sounding tiny and weak in the dark. 

“I know,” Jay says, yawning. Then he rolls over, and after a few moments of alternating rustling and silence, he falls asleep in Carlos’s bed. 

Carlos allows himself a minute of listening to Jay’s crushed-sounding snores and palming his cock through his sweats before he slides from his bed and tiptoes across the room. He might let Jay grope him and dry-hump him, but he’s not gonna _sleep_ next to him. He has to draw the line somewhere, and for reasons he can’t quite name, sleeping next to Jay seems more pathetic than anything of the other things he willingly stoops to. He stumbles to Jay’s bed and brushes the candy wrappers to the floor before he climbs in. Then, with his face pressed into the pillow that still smells faintly of Jay’s dirty hair, Carlos jacks himself off until he’s gasping, eyes wet and stomach tied up as he spills hot and sticky over his fist.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More of this! I hope some of you out there are still reading and enjoying. Thank you for leaving comments and kudos! <3

After their failure at the museum, they lay low for awhile, try to blend in. Carlos wishes it didn’t feel so good, but it does. He _likes_ to pretend that he’s normal, sleeping on clean sheets every night and learning about things from _books_ instead of experience, instead of pain. It’s nice to walk down the halls of Auradon prep dodging only nervous glances and accusatory eyes instead of fruit, pebbles, wads of spit. It pleases him more more than it should, certainly more than his mother would like.

Kind of how Prince Ben pleases him more than he should. Carlos knows how absurd he’s being, how out of his league Ben is, how improbable and wishful and _very much like him_ it is to develop crushes on unattainable people. Carlos wonders what it is about the dashing, athletic, and probably straight type that gets him so hung up, when there are plenty of more reasonable boys at Auradon to pine after. He suspects most of his interest in Ben, at least, comes from the fact that he’s actually _nice_ to him and his friends, gracious and hospitable as far as Auradon kids go. He’s also beyond beautiful, which certainly helps. 

They’re on the tourney field, Carlos’s practice jersey itchy and clinging to his chest while he bends at the waist and sucks in straggling breaths, winded and all together terrible at this sport that Jay has taken to like he’s been playing it his entire life. Carlos hates almost everything about it, namely having to watch Jay pinwheel and spin-kick his way across the lawn like it’s easy, but having Ben there at least makes it tolerable. He’s nice to look at and he offers to take Carlos on as his personal project, which makes his stomach flicker to life with butterflies. 

Ben is presently trying to teach him how to hit the tourney ball with his mallet, which is proving to be a surprisingly elusive task. He lobs him gentle, underhand throws, which Carlos is supposed to hammer back towards him. Despite beating his personal best level at the video game in his and Jay’s dorm room last night, Carlos is absolutely hopeless when it comes to generalizing those skills to actually hitting a real life ball. It’s probably because the coach is audibly fawning over Jay on the sidelines, (“You’re gonna have a girlfriend before second semester if you keep up this type of work, kid. You’ve got more potential than I’ve ever seen before, and the ladies love a tourney champion, lemme tell you”), or because Ben is distractingly attractive, with all his encouraging smiles and increasingly easy tosses in Carlos’s direction. 

“You’ve almost got it. Just remember, track the ball with your _eyes_ , hit where it’s gonna be, not where it _is_ ,” he explains, brushing sweaty blonde bangs from his brow and behind his ear. 

Carlos sighs and swings, narrowly missing the ball for the hundredth time. “Isn’t there something I could do _besides--_ ” He stops, seeing a flash of copper fur in the corner of his eye, something alive and less than human darting across the jewel-green of the tourney field. His gut seizes up, mind locked on the single syllable _dog_ , and before he has time to think much more about it, he’s sprinting across the grass. 

He’s never seen a dog in the flesh before, only crudely drawn diagrams and blurry photos, but as he steals panicked glances over his shoulder, it occurs to him that he expected them to be much _larger_. Bigger teeth, more claws. This _thing_ chasing after him is just a mangy brown blur, not much bigger than the sewer rats back on the Island. Still, Carlos is terrified, heart thudding rapidly in his chest as he bolts towards the safety of the forest flanking the tourney field. He can hear Ben calling after him, jogging to keep up, eyes wide and bewildered. He hates himself for acting this way in front of Ben, but it’s this or death, and he’d rather live than be torn to bits. 

Carlos is half-way up a tree, the dog’s paws braced at the bace of the trunk when Ben finally catches up to them. It takes several minutes of coaxing to urge him down the tree, but once Carlos commits to reaching out tentative fingers and brushing them against coarse fur, his anxiety melts into relief. Dude doesn’t bite his fingers off, he doesn’t even growl or show his teeth. Carlos realizes his mother lied to him his whole life, told him dogs were fierce and vicious and incapable of love, when all along _she_ had been the one incapable of love. Dude is warm and alive and wriggling under his fingers, there isn’t a single thing about his dopey dog smile and lolling tongue that seems dangerous. It makes Carlos wonder what else his mother lied to him about, what else he took for fact that he should be questioning, deconstructing. If dogs aren’t incapable of love, maybe is worthy _of_ love. Maybe she was wrong about that too.

He grows quiet and stoic where he sits, Ben regarding him from a few feet away with a heavy gaze. Carlos swallows, eyes darting up to meet Ben’s and cheeks coloring, suddenly aware of a tension between them, an electricity which settles in the air and makes it taut. “Good boy,” Ben says awkwardly, reaching out and clapping Carlos on the shoulder in what’s probably supposed to be a sporty, macho way. It doesn’t feel like that, though. Carlos can feel the heat of his hand through the polyester of his jersey, he can feel the weight of it linger there. Then he thinks of Jay’s drunk, clumsy weight against his back the other night, and his stomach plummets, a confusing mess of heat and hunger and self-loathing. “I mean, you’re a good runner,” Ben adds, stumbling over his words. You’re...you’re fast. You know.”

Carlos flushes, nervous, scared he’s projecting his own attraction, scared that he _isn’t_. That Ben of Auradon, son of Belle, current prince and soon to be _king,_ who has a _girlfriend,_ is flirting with him. Or something. Carlos doesn’t have very much experience with flirting; back on the Isle if someone flirted with you they were usually trying to steal something or rip you off. Carlos has been conditioned to find affection suspect and write it off as a lie, plus, he’s never had a a boy just honest-to-god _flirt_ with him free of ulterior motives. But he’s also never been called a “good boy” by anyone other than Jay, and everything with Jay is muddy, complicated, a mess. “Thank you,” he mumbles, wondering distantly if he’s dreaming. 

Ben sidles away, eyes shifty and downcast. “Listen, I’m gonna give you guys some space, yeah?” Carlos’s stomach drops. _Who?_ Him and Jay? Does Ben think that flirting with Carlos is encroaching upon _space_ that he and Jay need? “You guys get to know each other and then, just, come find me when you’re done, ok?” Ben finishes, side-stepping away from Carlos like he suddenly doesn’t want to be too close to him, like he needs to get out of there fast before he does something stupid. Eyes wide, Carlos realizes he’s not talking about _Jay,_ he’s talking about _Dude_. He manages a weak nod, tangling his fingers into Dude’s fur, stomach knotted up and confused. “Yeah,” he says, clearing his throat. “Ok.” 

He watches Ben’s broad shoulders retreat, hunched and self conscious and very un-prince-like. And a he cautiously strokes the animal in his lap, he thinks about flirting, and lies, and his mother, and Jay. 

\---

After dinner Carlos is doing homework, oddly comforted by the dull, repetitive monotony of it. Dude followed him home after practice and is curled up by his feet, warm and scruffy against his ankle and even though every time he moves Carlos still jumps, and even though the whole situation is so, so ridiculous, Carlos can’t keep a sly smile from twisting his lips up every few seconds. He keeps thinking of Prince Ben’s sweaty hair and the broad sprawl of his shoulders, and feeling dizzy. 

Jay is _trying_ to do homework, but is spending more time doodling motorbikes on his notebook. “This blows,” he says eventually, throwing his pencil across the room. “I never thought I’d say this, but I’d rather work at my dad’s _shop_ than write an essay on Basic Morality. I’m dying.”

Carlos ignores him, snapping his book closed. “Jay, what would you do if a guy with a girlfriend kind of, came on to you?” 

His interest piqued, Jay’s eyes cut over to Carlos, wide and dark and twinkling. “Is the girlfriend hot?” 

Carlos shrugs. “I dunno? She’s a girl. She’s fine.” 

“I’d see if they were up for a threesome,” Jay answers, waggling his brows. Then his face falls, like he just realized why Carlos was asking about guys with girlfriends in the first place. “Wait, why? Did some guy hit on you? _Here_?” He gets up and scrambles onto Carlos’s bed, reaching for him and putting him in a loose, playful headlock. “Does wittle baby De Vil have a closet case boyfriend?” 

Carlos wiggles out of Jay’s grip, cheeks flushing to a violent crimson. “God. No,” he huffs, flailing as Jay grips him around the waist, dragging him back. “Just. Something weird happened today when we were trying out for Tourney.” 

“Besides you suddenly deciding you like _dogs?_ I mean, maybe girls are next. Maybe that threesome isn’t so far fetched for you. You’re a whole new man these days, C.”

“Don’t count on it,” Carlos snaps, pushing Jay away and reaching for Dude’s ears, ruffling the coarse fur on the back of his neck. “Just. I dunno. I felt like Ben--”

“ _Ben?!_ ” Jay crows, falling onto his back and kicking the air gleefully. “He _does_ look like one of those pretty-boys who sell themselves on the street corner in the Isle, I guess I’m not surprised. But _wow,_ he’s seems so... _good_. What did he say?!” 

Carlos rubs his face, trying in vain to chase the incriminating blush away. “That...I was good at running? It wasn’t what he _said_ though, it was how he said it, I dunno, maybe I’m reading too much into it.” He hides his head in his arms, squirming away from Jay, whose putting his dirty boots all over the bed and thumbing too roughly through his homework and trying to give Carlos a noogie all at the same time. Carlos wonders desperately why the idea of Jay’s shoe-grit in his sheets doesn’t upset him, but instead leaves a weird, sickening burn in his gut. He wonders why Jay has this inexplicable power over him, when there are beautiful, kind, golden boys in the world like Ben, boys who might even _want him back_. He thinks briefly about goodness, and how it might be something that’s only appealing from a distance, like fire. He can’t touch it; he’ll get burnt. It’s not for him. Better to languish in the shadows, maybe. 

“No offense, but even if he _does_ like dudes you’re probably not his type. He’s probably only going for it because you’re so obviously gay that he knows you won’t turn a beefcake like him down,” Jay offers, eyes twinkling and voice lilting, like he doesn’t even know he’s being a jerk. 

Carlos winkles his nose. “What do you mean I’m not his type? Do you think I’m too skinny and weird-looking to be attractive--”

“Whoa, hey hey hey,” Jay says, interrupting him, holding his hands up and shaking his head, eyes narrowed. “I just meant, you’re _evil_. You’re from the Isle. He’s a goody goody. Like, the goodiest of the goody goodies. You’re not his type because you’re a _villain_ remember? Plus, dude. You’re not weird looking.” 

Carlos nods, eyes downcast. Of course he remembers where he’s from, what he’s like. It’s an impossible thing to forget.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A nice long chapter update for you! Things get juicy between Carlos and Ben, and perhaps even juicer with Jay and Carlos. There's also a flashback with what might be considering dub-con, just a warning!

Back on the island, Jay was the first person Carlos ever came out to. Even before Evie, who _loves_ having a gay best friend she can test her beauty potions on and use to model her newest men’s wear, Evie who shoots Carlos long, mournful, sympathetic glances every time Jay flirts with a girl in front of him because although he’s never _told_ her anything specific, she’s perceptive enough to notice the tiny shifts in his behavior when Jay’s around. He _would_ tell her, but Jay’s made it clear he’d rather Evie and Mal didn’t know anything that would make them watch him and Carlos more closely. 

Carlos didn’t mean to tell Jay when he did. It just slipped out, an accident. They’d just been caught teaming up on a duo of girls their age, sweet-talking them along the edge of the marketplace, slipping flowers into their breast-pockets with one hand while they craftily took things with the other, golden barrettes inlaid with semi-precious stones, woven bracelets made from chain and leather. It was easy for Jay, or at least he made it _look_ easy. Carlos struggled more. Not with the theft itself, but to charm their marks convincingly. It’s why they were running for their lives, sprinting through dirty, crowded streets while the girls chased after them holding their skirts above their knees screaming insults. 

Jay abruptly turned a corner and dragged Carlos along after him, scrambling up a rickety looking fire-escape attached to the outside of a sagging brick building. There was a line of sagging laundry running lengthwise across it, and he pulled Carlos between the rows of shirts and dirty rags and there they sat, hunched together behind a billowing sheet, holding their breath. After a few moments, they heard the girls, their voices high pitched and furious as they stomped by, “ _What_ rats! I’d _heard_ about Jafar’s son, but he seemed so _nice!_ And that was a family heirloom...” 

Carlos let out his breath in quiet huff, head thudding back against the railing of the fire escape. “That was close.” 

Jay grinned, holding the barrette up to the sun so that the translucent red stones winked. “I’ll say. What even happened? I _almost_ had that brooch out of the other one’s collar when she just started whacking me with her purse? I was out of there before I could figure out what her deal was. Too bad, it was a nice brooch. Mother of pearl.” 

Carlos’s cheeks colored, because he had just remembered that it was _his_ fault their covers were blown. “Um, I messed up. I was like an inch away from her face, untying her bracelet, and she must have thought I was taking too long to kiss her or something and got suspicious? I guess it was obvious I wasn’t _actually_ trying to get under her skirt.” 

Jay’s eyes got wide. “Why didn’t you just _kiss_ her then? And what do you mean you weren’t actually trying to get under her skirt? I mean, yeah, the flirting is so we can swipe stuff, but it’s still real flirting, right? I mean I wouldn’t say no to some under the skirt action,” he explained, waggling his eyebrows, mouth twisting into his trademark smirk, the one that still make’s Carlos’s stomach flip over. 

Carlos was winded, his heart was still beating fast and hard from the adrenaline of their narrow escape and he wasn’t thinking things through; he wasn’t on guard like he usually tried to be around Jay, so maybe that’s why it fell out of him. He shook his head, shrugged. “It’s not real flirting for me, I didn’t _want_ to kiss her,” he explained. “I don’t even like girls.” 

Jay was quiet for a moment, brow furrowed like he just couldn’t _understand_ why anyone wouldn’t like girls, and then it visibly dawned on him. “Ohhhh,” he said, slow and even, pupils so wide and black and flashing they were like something you could fall into.“You’re gay?”

Carlos froze, realizing what he had revealed, throat suddenly tight with panic. Even when he was alone with himself he didn’t feel completely comfortable with the word _gay_ , it seemed too simple, too short to encompass all his confusion and self-loathing and desire, black and twisted like his mother’s hair clogging the tub drain, like a thorny vine that had grown in his chest. Before he could defend himself or invent a plausible lie, Jay reached for his shoulder, squeezing it reassuringly. “Hey, dude. Don’t freak out, I don’t care. It’s cool.” 

Carlos blinked, swallowing thickly. Jay’s hand felt good and solid on him, warm against his bare skin, and he stared at the calloused brown fingers digging into him until they blurred. “It is?” he mumbled eventually, noticing his eyes were stinging and wet, but thankfully no real tears had fallen. 

“Well, yeah. Did you think I’d get mad?” Jay asked, hand falling away from Carlos’s shoulder.

“I don’t know,” Carlos said. He wiped his eyes. “I mean, yeah. Maybe. I just didn’t know.” 

“No, it’s fine. It’s helpful. I’ll quit finding girls for you to rob and start throwing dudes at you instead. Then we can stop ending up hiding on fire escapes because you got us caught,” he joked, standing before pulling Carlos to his feet after him. 

“Ok,” Carlos said, finally allowing himself to smile, face bright with relief. “I’ll probably be a better actor in that case.Especially if they’re cute,” he added, adrenaline spiking in his chest at the novelty of admitting something like that aloud. 

Jay nodded. “I’ll make sure they’re cute, all right.”

Carlos couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe the tight, anxious bubble that permanently resided in his chest ever since he started figuring out he liked guys had _finally_ popped. He _told_ someone, he told _Jay_ , and they were still friends. Jay wasn’t freaked out, or disgusted, or angry. He sighed deeply, trumping down the stairs of the fire escape, Jay’s arm brushing against his like nothing had changed. Carlos sighed, feeling thrilled. 

“So can I ask you one thing?” Jay asked after a minute, brows raised and eyes twinkling. 

Carlos’s heart stopped and he risked a glance at Jay, hoping whatever he was going to ask him was something he could answer honestly. “...What?” 

Jay stopped, narrowed his gaze very critically at Carlos. “Am I hot? I mean, like, I _know_ I’m hot but what do _you_ think? Because your opinion is different since it’s like a girl’s, so I actually care what you think.” Jay cocked his head, standing in the street blocking foot traffic, his hands out expectantly like he was ready for Carlos to start showering him in compliments. 

Mouth dry, Carlos forced himself to speak. “Uh, yeah. You’re hot.” It hung in the air awkwardly, terrifying in all its truth, all its candor, the beginning of a complicated string of other confessions: _you’re hot, you’re so, so hot I can hardly stand it sometimes, love the smell of your sweat and the way your hair looks when it’s messy and I jack off thinking of getting on my knees for you, yes, of fucking course you’re hot._ He just stood there, feeling desperately like he needed to add something, needed to stop himself from spilling the rest of it like stolen coins from a hole in his pocket. “It’s like, kind of weird because you’re my best friend, but, you’re an objectively hot guy. I guess,” he muttered, stumbling through his words, cheeks so fiercely crimson he was pretty sure Jay could tell he was lying.

Jay seemed satisfied though, nodding to himself and slinging his arm around Carlos’s shoulder, and that was that. Carlos being gay became less and less of a secret and morphed into just another aspect of his self concept, like his dark eyes and his fear of dogs and the way he liked to dance in his room when his mother was passed out. It was simply another part of him. Jay knew, and eventually, so did Evie, and later, Mal, who teased him about it but didn’t actually care.

Now, at Auradon Prep, it’s something he has to _tell_ people again. It’s no longer part of his reputation, it’s something kids whisper about behind their palms when he passes them in the halls, muffled titters of _That De Vil kid, from the Island, heard his mother tried to kill a bunch of puppies, also, is he gay? maybe him and the Jafar boy, are they---_

He walks with his head down, teeth grit against the onslaught of rumors and speculation, trying hard not to hear it as he attempts to disappear between his friends. He shrinks behind Jay who side-eyes him, shoves him gently but firmly away. “Dude. You gotta quit being all over me, people are talking,” he says. _Jay_ , Jay who was the first person he ever came out to, Jay whose arm was _always_ resting atop his shoulders or around his waist on the Isle, Jay who never stops tackling him or grabbing him or hopping on his back, telling _Carlos_ to quit because people are _talking_. 

Carlos glares at him, reaching out and punching him swiftly on the shoulder. “Yeah, whatever _bro_ ,” he snaps, reminding himself that every time he and Jay end up in bed together, it’s Jay who initiates it, Jay whose hands are all over him, Jay who _finds him in the dark_ when he’s hard and drunk and lonely. 

After class, Carlos pushes past Jay on their way to tourney practice, and partners up with Ben for drills, wondering exactly how much of the tension he feels between them is in his imagination, and how far he can push what’s not.

\---

They scrimmage and Carlos and Ben are on opposing sides. Carlos covers Ben aggressively, stepping into his space and sprinting after him in the field whenever he tries to make himself available to receive a pass, always close behind him, against him, in his space. They brush and collide countless times, elbows and sweat and electricity, so much of it Carlos feels dizzy, powerful. “Wow, De Vil,” Ban pants, clapping Carlos on the back once it’s over, following close behind him as they head to the bleachers to cool off. His cheeks are flushed from running, rivulets of perspiration running down his neck and into his jersey, and Carlos follows them with his eyes. “You sure brought it tonight. You do that come game day and you might actually make it off the bench for defense.” 

“Thanks,” Carlos says, hands shaking, Jay’s gaze burning fiercely into his back from where he’s lacing and relacing his cleats, glowering even though his side won the scrimmage. Carlos tilts into Ben’s arm, lightheaded, buzzing, knowing full well that he’s being watched. He doesn’t know what he wants, what he’s trying to prove, if he’s trying to make Jay angry or if he just genuinely wants Ben to want him. It all bubbles messily inside him, a whole host of conflicting emotions. 

He swigs gracelessly from his water bottle and it drips down his chin. He’s well aware of two pairs of eyes on him, Jay’s suspicious glare and Ben all tense and shifty beside him, moving things in and out of his sports duffle but not actually leaving for the locker room. Sticking around. Heart in his throat, Carlos makes himself swallow, makes himself turn to face Ben. “Hey,” he says, staring at Ben’s chest because he’s too nervous to meet his eyes. “I, um, I’ve been practicing. But there’s a few things I still don’t get and I was wondering if maybe you could help me out? I could come by your dorm sometime this week, or we could hang after practice...” 

Ben shrugs, stepping towards Carlos even though they’re already standing so close the toes of their cleats are nearly bumping up against one another. “I’m free now,” he says. 

Carlos’s heart thuds so loud he worries Ben can hear it. He thinks of all the boys back on the Isle who he sweet-talked into letting him blow them, all the wadded up bills and loose coins he slipped from their pockets, all the watches he slid from their wrists, the fancy styluses and leather wallets, all the things he took from them. He doesn't think very often of the things they took from him, but he's thinking of them now, and for the hundredth time he wonders what it is that Prince Ben sees in him. What he likes, what he wants. Jay's voice echoes in his head, reminding him, _you're probably not his type. You're from the Isle. You're Evil._

He doesn’t want to listen to Jay right now, so he forces a smile and brushes his fingers swiftly down Ben's sweat-sticky forearm, just for a moment, as fleeting as breath. Just like Jay taught him, the ways you touch a person to make them forget you can steal from them. "Now is perfect. Um. Can we go for a walk?" 

Ben nods, smiling uneasily, but genuinely. "Yeah. Of course." 

\---

Carlos and Ben walk through the forest he first met Dude in, wishing very badly Dude was here now instead of with Evie, who always watches him during practice. If Dude were here, Carlos would have something to do with his hands. He would have something to focus on other than the nervous thud of his heart and the way his arm keeps brushing up against Ben’s, leaving his skin itching, burning. He could thread his fingers through Dude’s coarse, coppery fur and they could laugh about how fast Carlos ran away from him that first tourney practice, instead of walking side by side in tense, electric silence. 

“So,” Ben says eventually, kicking at a half-decayed log on the ground before sitting down on it, knees splayed apart. He gazes up at Carlos, blue eyes so clear and glittering, skin tan and smooth and unreal. He looks like a model; he looks like a prince. He _is_ a prince, Carlos reminds himself, stomach twisting up into a knot. “Do you really have tourney questions, or did you want to talk about something else?” Ben asks. 

Carlos sits down next to him gingerly and puts his face in his hands. He’s in way over his head; he knows it, so he clears his throat and comes clean. “To be honest, I have no idea what I’m doing. I like, imagined asking you out, but that’s as far as I got.” He lets it hang in the air, messy and weird, embarrassing and transparent. He waits for Ben to laugh at him. Instead, Ben scoots a little closer. 

“Soooo...you _were_ asking me out,” he says, and although Carlos isn’t looking at him, he can tell he’s smiling. 

Carlos peels his face away from his arms and squints up at Ben, a little surprised by how even his voice is, how friendly and playful. “I’m not sure. I mean, yeah, kind of, but like, only if you’re into it.” 

Ben nods a lot, he nods so much and for so long Carlos thinks he looks like one of those bobble head animals people stick on their dashboards. He’s only seen those Jafar’s shop back on the Isle. He rubs his eyes, wanting to think of anything besides home in this moment, anything that can remind him of Jay. Finally, Ben stops nodding, and instead picks a twig up off the ground and starts digging a hole with it, like he needs something to do with his hands to distract himself. “I appreciate your honesty,” he says after a moment, smiling briefly at Carlos, shy and sincere. “I’ll try and do you the same decency.” 

“Huh,” Carlos says, watching Ben’s hole get deeper and deeper, until the twig snaps and he tosses the two halves to the side. “No one’s ever accused me of _decency_ before.” 

Ben shrugs. “I told you, I don’t think you guys are your parents.” He pauses, gaze roving up Carlos until it stops to rest at his eyes. They look at each other for a few loaded moments, and finally Ben says, “So, if you asked me out, does that make this a date?” 

Carlos’s blood feels like it’s freezing over, his stomach feels like something huge and dangerous is opening up inside it. He realizes with a deepening clarity that he doesn’t know how this type of thing _works_ on Auradon; his romantic and sexual escapades on the Island were limited to hasty blow-jobs in shadowed allies and whatever he and Jay did, infrequently and in secret. He’s never been on a _date_ in his life. Still, he swallows thickly, and tries to fake it. “Pretty lousy date. I didn’t pick you up in my sweet ride. Didn’t pay for dinner. We’re just sitting on a rotten log,” Carlos says, grinning a faltering grin. “But I guess it’s a date if you want it to be. Like I said, I’m not really sure what I’m doing, I’m just...I dunno. You’re, um. Really hot. Like, outrageously hot, obviously. But it’s not like I actually expect someone like you to be into someone like me, so, yeah. Whatever you want it to be, it is.” 

Ben is nodding again, eyes fixed on a far away point in the woods. “I said I’d be honest, so here it goes. I trust you to, uh, consider that I’m telling you this in confidence.” 

“You _are_ a prince. I get it.” 

“Yeah. That,” Ben says awkwardly, cheeks coloring. Then he clears his throat. “So, the truth is that I _do_ find you really attractive, I have ever since I first saw you. I also find your friend Mal really attractive. It’s complicated, and weird, and I think part of it is who you guys are, where you’re from. It’s really...I dunno. Different. And exciting.” 

Carlos stares at Ben, at his increasingly pink cheeks, his eyes all scrunched up and nervous. He doesn’t look like a prince in this moment, just another boy, as young and messed up and as confused as Carlos is. It’s kind of comforting. Carlos shakes his head hard. He feels numb, completely unable to process anything Ben is telling him aside from the fact that he’s telling him anything _at all_ , that he’s treating him like a human, like an equal. “I’m flattered,” he says eventually. “That you trust me enough to talk about this. And also that you think I’m cute.” 

Ben flushes even deeper, drops his gaze and stares at the forest floor, dirt packed hard under their cleats, littered with pine needles. A smile flickers ever so briefly across Ben’s lips. “I think you’re very cute.” 

“You have a girlfriend,” Carlos reminds him, suddenly remembering Audrey and her wide fake smile, her teeth so white they hurt to look at, her perfect hair and perfect make up. 

Ben shrugs. “I like girls too.” 

“No, I mean...what are you doing out here with me if you have a girlfriend? What are you doing with a girlfriend if you think I’m cute, or if you like Mal? Not that...you just don’t seem like the cheating type.” 

Ben winces, and nods kind of guiltily. “I don’t plan on cheating on Audrey,” he says, very seriously. He pauses, and then after a moment he adds, “but I do plan on breaking up with her, soon. She’s...she’s sweet, and good intentioned, but she’s also possessive and jealous and I don’t even like her like that, not anymore. But she’s kind of...fragile, I guess. I have to be careful. I don’t want to hurt her too bad, so I’m waiting for the right time. Probably after coronation, once some of the excitement’s died down.” 

Carlos sighs deeply, letting his head fall back so he can look at the sky, dusky and pink as the daylight fades and gives way to sunset. “You’re so _good,_ ” he mumbles, awed by how much Ben is considering everyone’s _feelings_ in the matter. “It’s crazy. Like a different language.” 

Ben smiles at him, leaning into his space so their shoulders bump together. “You’re probably not as bad as you think.” Carlos’s skin tingles at the contact, but it’s manageable. The tension and the electricity between him and Ben has changed, fizzled out into the usual, dull burn of being in the presence of a hot guy. But nothing magical, nothing world-ending. It’s kind of a relief.

Smiling back, Carlos reminds him, “I thought you liked that I was bad? It sounds like you have a villain thing, maybe.” 

Ben’s cheeks color again, and he shakes his head, face split over a self-deprecating sort of smile. “I grew up hearing stories about the villains on the Island, and everything that happened to my parents and their generation. And those stories, they were terrifying, kept me up at night. But at the same time, they were so _fascinating_ , so crazy and dangerous. Kids over here, we don’t know much about the Isle, how it really is. Just legend and stuff. It’s kind of capital R Romantic, you know? Something so strange.It has its appeal.” 

Carlos does know. “I sorta felt the same way about Auradon. Like, simultaneously scared of and drawn to its difference.” He cocks his head thoughtfully, remembering their trip over the water, Jay’s hands on him and the fancy chocolate so sweet and stinging in his mouth, the promise of strangeness ahead of them. “There’s something exciting about a place that represents everything you’ve been raised to hate,” he says eventually. 

“Or fear,” Ben adds, lips twisting into a faint smile. “Danger can be really attractive.” 

Carlos’s stomach tenses up and he has to look away; Ben’s eyes are too blue, too bright, like the whole of that shimmering ocean separating their contrasting worlds. “If you’re into danger, Mal’s probably a better bet than me,” he confesses.

Ben’s hand, warm and sweat-damp, creeps onto Carlos’s knee just for a moment. Then it falls away, so fast the touch might not have happened at all. “Don’t sell yourself short,” Ben says quietly. 

They sit together in heated silence for a few seconds until Ben stands and brushes himself off, little bits of leaf and bark clinging to his jersey falling to the ground. He offers a hand and Carlos thinks twice about taking it, reminded acutely of Jay on the fire escape after they hid from those girls they were robbing, Jay’s rough, brown, thieving hand and his smile full of lies.

But then he lets Ben pull him to his feet, thinking that difference has its appeal, certainly, fleeting and exciting and exhilarating. Difference is beautiful like fire, like sunsets, like gold, like princes. But in the end, there’s nothing like home. Carlos wants very badly to get lost in the sincerity of Ben’s smiles, in the pure blue of his eyes,but he _can’t_. There’s nothing there, no depth, no secret past nor hidden scars, no cruelty, no pain. He thinks of Jay, and feels nauseous. 

In one swift, fluid motion, Ben pulls Carlos against him. Suddenly the world smells clean and crisp like laundry detergent, deodorant, hair-gel, toothpaste, and Carlos is dizzy; he doesn’t know what’s happening until it happens. Ben presses brief and open mouthed kiss to Carlos’s cheek. His lips brush very very close to the corner of his mouth, so close Carlos can taste his breath as he pulls away, his eyes fluttering shut in overwhelm. 

As soon as it happens it’s over, and Ben is steering him back towards the tourney field, cheeks burning and gaze downcast as he stomps along. “Thanks for hanging out,” he says from the safety of a few feet away, hands clasped in front of him. “Maybe we can do it again sometime. After I break up with Audrey.” 

Carlos nods, walking on autopilot, heart thudding and stomach in knots. All he can think of is Jay, the way Jay’s lips feel against his pulse, against his temple, the scrape of his stubble razing the fine hairs at the back of his neck. All he can think of is every time Jay has emptied himself against his body, and how in all those times, his lips have never come as close to Carlos’s as Prince Ben of Auradon’s just did. 

The fact that Jay has never once kissed him has always been something he’s distantly aware of, but in this moment it seems unforgivably painful. The most vast heart break, the most insufferable homesickness. It just seems so _absurd_ , so _unfair_ , and his throat is thick with a wounded kind of anger. “Yeah, ok,” he tells Ben weakly, hands shoved into the pockets of his jersey shorts. “Or, you could call Mal. I wouldn’t be hurt,” he adds, meaning it. 

“Maybe,” Ben says. “We’ll see.” He waves to Carlos awkwardly as they make it back to school, backing away and up the stairs to his dorm, leaving Carlos standing stiff and alone in the main entrance hall. 

He waves back too late, chest aching. 

\---

Carlos lets himself into his room as quietly as possible, wishing very hard that Jay was over at the girl’s, or taking a shower, or on a thieving spree, _anything_ but sitting on his bed brooding and waiting for Carlos to come back so he can interrogate him about his post-practice foray with Ben. But of course, as soon as the door creaks open Jay is upon him, arms crossed and brows heavy and accusatory as he vaults off his bed and crowds Carlos at the door. 

_Where were you?_ Carlos expects, or at the very crudest, _what were you doing with Ben?_ So it smarts horribly when Jay spits out, “Did you fuck him?” 

Carlos is too taken aback to say anything, stunned by Jay’s stony face and eyes flint-black and flashing, a far cry from the wink-wink nudge-nudge he used to get whenever he came back from a date or not-date on the Isle. He blinks wildly, hanging onto his sports duffel and staring at Jay until he remembers the brief brush of lips so close to his own, until he remembers he’s _mad_ at Jay, he’s _hurt_. “What?!” He snaps, shoving his duffle into Jay’s arms and storming off to the bathroom, stripping out of his jersey on the way there and making sure to throw it on Jay’s bed as he passes it. “What are you even talking about?” he shoots over his shoulder.

“Did. You. Fuck. Him,” Jay says, enunciating each word with a cold, deliberate bite. To Carlos’s surprise, Jay grabs his shoulder and spins him around before he gets to the bathroom, holding him fast and tight. “Dude, didn’t I _tell_ you, he’s just using you to figure out his sexuality bullshit, he doesn’t actually care, you’re gonna get hurt,” he says, voice coming out wheezy and rapid fire, tinged with something feral, desperate. 

In that moment, it hits Carlos like a sucker punch in his gut. It all makes sense. The excessive wrestling and tackling, the nights spent curled together on a single straw pallet atop a dumpster in the Isle, Jay naming stars and inventing constellations to help Carlos fall asleep. How Jay _looks_ at him sometimes, so singular and so serious, like he’s the only guy in the world, the only one that matters. Jay isn’t just his straight best friend who uses him when he’s drunk and lonely because he knows he can, Jay _likes_ him. Jay has maybe liked him all along, and _that’s_ why he acts this way. 

Carlos is stunned to silence by the revelation, standing there in nothing but his cleats, socks, and boxers, skin prickled into gooseflesh, mouth hanging open. Even _now_ Jay’s eyes keep roving over him, flicking from his face down to the pale, freckled expanse of his chest, his fingers dug so deeply into Carlos’s shoulders his grip might bruise. His gaze is stricken. He looks _scared,_ and Carlos wonders why he never noticed that before.

What was left of the pain in Carlos’s gut grows hard and barbed and flares up into a pure, self-righteous anger. “I’m gonna get _hurt_?” he spits, twisting out of Jay’s hand. “I’m already hurt! And it has _nothing_ to do with Ben, _you’re the one_ who’s using me to figure out his sexuality bullshit!” He says, finally, _finally,_ laying it out between them, finally giving name to the thing that’s been brewing unspoken between them.

Jay flushes deeply, and Carlos can’t look without doing something stupid, without wanting to taste the heat of Jay’s blush under his tongue, so he turns abruptly on his heel and locks himself into the bathroom. “Dude’s at Evie and Mal’s, you can go pick him up if you want. Otherwise leave me alone,” he snaps through the door, hands shaking where they’re braced against the frame. He’s sick with wanting Jay, sick with years worth of convincing himself Jay could never want him back. The possibility that he could have been wrong is dizzying, world-altering. He feels like he needs to sit down. 

If Jay answers, Carlos doesn’t hear him over the sound of running water, or the terrified, thrilled thud of his own blood.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DEFINITELY a dub-con/underage sex warning on this chapter. It all happens in flashback, but it does happen. We also draw ever closer to something happening between characters in the present, too, so stay tuned. Thank you to everyone who's reading!

An entire day passes, and Jay hardly _looks_ at Carlos. The absence of his gaze stings terribly, but Carlos also feels a pang of complacency at having gotten under Jay’s skin, at least, after so many years of Jay getting under his. At first, anyway. This lasts all of six hours or so before Carlos feels like he might die without Jay’s attention, without his irritating voice grating in his ear, without his hands in their stupid fingerless leather gloves always creeping onto his shoulders, into his hair, incessant and deliberate. He wonders more than once over the course of the day if he was _wrong_ about Jay, if his revelation last night was actually just a mess of projection, hurt, and wishful thinking, but the yawning and obvious lack of contact suggests otherwise. 

It’s such a stark contrast from their usual dynamic that the girls notice immediately, and Mal pulls him aside at lunch under the guise of spying on Ben. “So,” she says, eyes fixed ahead as they walk side by side, elbow firm against Carlos’s ribs like a warning. “I can’t help but notice you and Jay aren’t talking. What’s going on? Whatever it is it better not last, because we’ve got work to do and I need everyone on the same side.” 

Carlos’s heart clenches up like a fist, a wave of sickness washing over him. “How could you tell?” he asks flatly. 

“Well, Jay usually has his hands all over you, for one. And you’re usually all puppy eyed-- _don’t_ give me that _look_ \-- about it.” 

Carlos grits his teeth, staring at the ground and feeling utterly horrified that even Mal, who is probably the meanest and coldest person he knows, notices things he’s tried very hard to conceal. “It’s not like that,” he mumbles, since it’s _not_. This isn’t some lover’s spat and he and Jay aren’t fighting, not really. 

“Well, whatever it is, lock it up. We don’t have time for stuff like this,” she sighs, plunking down on the bleachers a few feet away from Ben and his group of friends, their tittering laughter and cloud of sweet-smelling hairspray surrounding them like magic. She sighs, resting her chin in her palms. “Don’t they look like a whole different species?” she muses. 

Carlos shrugs, thinking of Ben’s smiles last night, how real and fleeting and warm they were, how inaccessible. Like trying to reach out and catch a flame in hand. “Yeah, they’re weird,” he agrees, staring at his high-tops. “But so are we. Just a different kind of weird.” 

Mal stares at him. “Don’t get soft on me, De Vil.” 

He elbows her. “I’m not, quit. I’m just having a weird day. I feel, like, _naked_ when Jay’s ignoring me.” 

She wrinkles up her nose, like she doesn’t want to think about Carlos naked. “Yeah, what’s the deal with you guys? You’re normally the dynamic duo, always ganging up on me or E. Must have been some pretty big stuff to mess with your bromance.” 

He drops his gaze again, hating that word, hating how easily Mal can look in on his life and make assumptions. He chews at his lip and eventually answers, “It’s not a big deal. It’ll blow over by tonight.” 

“It better,” she says, flicking him on the back of the ear. “Or else I’ll find something in my spell book to fix it instead.” 

Carlos hope’s he’s right, because he doesn’t know how much longer he can withstand the silence. 

\---

The first time Carlos sucked a boy off, he was thirteen. The boy was older than him, too old to be accepting blow-jobs from boys as young as Carlos, but he was handsome enough, well-groomed and well dressed, probably a traveler from the east end of the Island, a merchant or trader’s son in fine sable leather, gold rings heavy on his fingers. 

Even then, Carlos knew it was all to impress Jay. He had butterflies in his stomach and bile in his throat as the boy led him into an alley with a firm grip around his wrist and an oily look on his face, but he wanted those rings, he _needed_ those rings to give Jay, show him that he was putting the skills he’d taught him to good use. To prove that he wasn’t just some weedy, nerdy kid with his science projects and useless inventions he tinkered away on in the basement, he was _good_ for something. Good with his mouth, good with his hands, good at deception. Just like Jay. 

He sank to his knees, cringing because he didn’t want to get gritty black stains from the alley all over his favorite white jeans. The boy, whose name he had already forgotten, unzipped his fly and tangled his hand roughly into Carlos’s hair, and before he had time to prepare himself for the heat of the taste or the base, animal rawness of it all, Carlos was gagging around a cock. 

His eyes watered and he clutched uselessly at the boy’s patched leather chaps, feeling like he was falling, like he was suffocating. “You can take more,” the boy said, thrusting shallowly into Carlos’s mouth. “With pretty lips like that.” 

Carlos’s stomach turned over, and he realized quite suddenly that he didn’t actually want to be doing this, he didn’t know how, he wasn’t _ready._ He was a weedy, nerdy kid, he salvaged scrap metal and wires from dumpsters to build things, he didn’t _suck guys off_ , he wasn’t a _thief_ , no matter how many times he tagged along after Jay, wishing he was. Carlos choked, spit frothing over his chin and the other boy just sighed, fist tightening against his scalp. 

He almost forgot why he was there, what it was he _wanted_ , needed. He tried to stifle his gag reflex, tried to use his tongue and bob his head like he knew he was supposed to. He had to make this believable, so that the boy would lose himself, tilt his head back and close his eyes and let Carlos get his hands in his pockets. 

After a few seconds, he scrunched his face up and grit his teeth, cheeks blotchy and read and something twitching in his jaw as he rocked his hips solidly into Carlos’s face. Seeing his chance, Carlos reached for the guy’s forearm, sliding his hand down so that he could interlace their fingers, forcing the palm at the base of his skull to grip him tighter. As he helped the boy hold his head steady enough to fuck, he managed to slide one ring over the rough scrape of his knuckles, another off of his thumb. 

The boy came and Carlos choked on it, eyes streaming and tongue numb and tingling with the sour, salty taste of him. He spit most of it out onto the black, trash-littered pavement between his knees as the guy tucked himself back into his pants. “Next time you do that, swallow. Good whores always swallow,” he offered like he was friendly advice, straightening his chaps and suspenders. 

“I’m not a whore,” Carlos reminded him, voice raw and scraping out of his used throat. He felt empty, wrung out, even with the rings solid and heavy like promises in his pocket. “Unless you plan on paying me.” 

Before the boy left, he pulled out a few tattered bills from his wallet and dropped them on the ground beside Carlos. “Here,” he said, nudging them across the cobblestone with the toe of his boot. “You weren’t bad.” Carlos picked them up with a shaking hand, wondering why this money felt different than the rings, why it felt dirty, why it stung in his palm like nettles. The next time he convinced a guy to fuck his mouth, he thought of Jay the whole time he did it, Jay’s mouth slack and parted, his eyes closed in bliss, his hands in Carlos’s hair. It made it much, much easier. 

\---

Dinner happens and Jay is nowhere to be found. Chasing skirts or sulking or stealing maybe, and Carlos wants desperately to not care but his stomach feels like lead, heavy and solid and excruciating at he sits beside Evie. Dude’s on his lap, licking his chin every few minutes while Carlos pushes his food around on his plate uselessly. Mal keeps glaring at him from across the table but Evie shakes her head no when she thinks he’s not looking, mouthing something to Mal he probably doesn’t want to see. Evie tries to rub his back gently at one point, but he pulls away from the contact, skin feeling too weird and feverish to withstand touch. 

“This is _really_ inconvenient,” Mal says eventually. 

“Mal!” Evie hisses through her teeth. 

“Come _on_ ,” Mal snaps, gesturing with her fork, which has a meatball speared on it like a tiny severed head, one of her victims. “I’m not gonna pretend this isn’t happening because Carlos is gonna cry about it, we’re on a _mission_ here and it seriously affects my plan if one of us is missing and the other one is _moping_ and being generally intolerable,” she gripes. 

Evie makes a face, her hand flying back to Carlos’s shoulder, making him flinch. “It doesn’t help _anything_ if you’re mean about it! I know we’re evil and all but if we’re totally alone here and if we don’t support each other then-”

“No, no,” Carlos says suddenly, interrupting Evie’s tirade. Two sets of eyes fall upon him, wide and expectant. He clears his throat, fingers kneading anxiously at Dude’s ears. “You’re right Mal. It’s just, I don’t know where he is anymore than you guys do. I’m the one he’s avoiding.” 

“On it,” Evie says, flipping a curl of indigo hair from her shoulder and pulling out her mirror. She tucks it deftly into the folds of her skirt and under the table. “Where’s Jay?” she asked in a hush, squinting at the image the mirror produces. In spite of himself, Carlos leans over, peering over her shoulder at the oval of reflective glass, its surface dark and indiscernible. 

“Where is he?” He asks, narrowing his gaze. He can’t see anything in the mirror, just a dense and shimmering darkness. 

Evie hands the mirror to Mal, who rolls her eyes and almost immediately gives it back to her. “Your guy’s room. I could tell because of that stupid tourney poster he hung up, it’s in the top right. He’s probably sleeping. How lame. Should we go get him?” 

Carlos shakes his head fiercely, very relieved that the mirror didn’t show Jay rolling around in bed with some girl, seeking to fill the void in his chest with something easy, simple, attainable. “No, it’s good he’s sleeping. Let him sleep. Maybe he’ll sleep it off.” 

Mal stares at him for a long time, eyes narrowed into suspicious green slits, nails tapping against the table in irritation. “Ok,” she says finally. “We’ll leave it alone tonight, but if he’s still weird in the morning, you have to talk to him. If you don’t, _I_ will.” 

Carlos nods, swallowing the sick lump in his throat. “Um, could Dude and I maybe sleep in your room tonight?” he asks sheepishly, wincing as he says it because he’s pretty sure Mal would stab him with her fork if she hadn’t already stabbed that meatball. 

“Of course,” Evie says, giving him a suffocating hug. 

“Ugh,” Mal says, collapsing across the table, face buried in her elbow. “I guess.” 

\---

Carlos doesn’t see Jay until practice the next day, and Jay makes it very clear that nothing has changed. They line up side by side to do drills, and Carlos keeps trying to catch Jay’s eye, but to no avail. He stares decidedly ahead of him, eyes fixed and unwavering, his hair pulled back into a low, loose pony tail he messes with every time Carlos moves into his line of vision.

It’s a grey day, with heavy black storm clouds resting above the field ominously, thunder rumbling in the distance. It kind of looks how Carlos feels inside, and as he lies on his back counting out crunches, he feels the first cold, wet drop of many land squarely between his eyes. It’s then that he decides he can’t stand it anymore. 

They roll over for push ups, and as he blinks at the yellowing grass between his splayed palms, Carlos steals a glance at Jay. “Hey,” he says, reaching out with the toe of his cleat and swiftly, gently nudging Jay’s shin. “Will you at least _look_ at me?” 

“You’re the one who told me to leave you alone,” Jay says gruffly, eyes still fixed stoically ahead of him. He does push-up after push up, nose nearly brushing against the ground they’re so deep and powerful, his arms taut and tense and rippling as he lowers himself and straightens back out like push-ups are as easy as breathing. Carlos stares, hating how even in this moment, when everything feels frayed and broken and fragile, he still can’t stop looking at the veins in Jay’s arms. 

“Well I didn’t mean _forever,_ ” he says, elbows shaking and wrists cracking after his fourth push up. “I’m over it. Getting kind of tired of you ignoring me, do you think you could, like, _stop_ for awhile so we can talk?” 

Jay chooses to ignore this question, instead continuing his miraculous string of push ups, sweat collecting in the wisps of hair at his temples, beaded and lickable and distracting. “You never came home last night,” he says after a moment, sinking back to his haunches and wiping the perspiration from his brow with the back of his hand, still refusing to meet Carlos’s eyes. “Also, you’re doing girl push ups.” 

“Home?” Carlos asks, the word sounding stark and cold in the grey, misty air, even though he didn’t mean for it to. He rolls off his knees, forcing another two real push-ups out, just to prove Jay wrong. 

“ _Back to the room,_ whatever,” Jay snaps, stretching his his hamstring almost violently, spots of color on his cheeks. “You knew what I meant.”

“Hey,” couch shouted after a sharp bleat on his whistle. “Jay, De Vil. Quit chatting, save it for after practice.” 

Carlos whips his gaze away from Jay, only to have it land on Ben, who’s regarding him from across the field with strange, a concerned line through his brow, something curious glittering in his eyes. Face heating up, Carlos wishes he could disappear, sink straight into the earth, softening under the growing onslaught of rain. 

\---

“These are for me? For the shop?” Jay asked skeptically, brows raised as he examined the two rings, well worn but unmistakably hewn from hammered gold, an emerald set deep into moorings on the wider one, the other stamped nearly with a latin inscription on the inside. “Where the hell did you _get_ them? These are quality pieces of jewelry.” 

Carlos beamed, leaning against Jafar’s work bench while Jay used the lamp and magnifying glass to inspect his fares. “Nicked them off of this guy who was passing through town. A leatherworker’s apprentice or something, fancy hair, wearing chaps.” 

Jay’s awed grin faded, and he peered at Carlos for a moment, searching his face, brows bunched up beneath his red knit cap. “Carlos...” he starts, setting the rings down and crossing his arms. “ _What_ did you do to get them?” 

Carlos shrunk back for a moment, stomach flipping nervously because he hadn’t told anyone about it yet, about the sticky cash or the sore throat or the dirt on his knees that his mother had screamed at him about, backing him into a corner of the kitchen until his back was bruised from the edge of the counter biting into it. “Um...nothing?” he lied, though not very convincingly. 

“Did you _fuck_ him?” Jay asked, looked horrified, rings forgotten as he stood up and grabbed Carlos by the shoulders. “Tell me you didn’t fuck him to get those rings for me, dude.” “I gave him a blow job?” Carlos admitted, eyes narrowed to sheepish slits and teeth bared. Jay’s face was inches away from his own and he was doubting his self control in such circumstances; he was half hard in his shorts, stomach roiling and twisting in confusion. “Does that even count as fucking? I don’t know what counts as fucking with two guys.” Jay sighed dramatically before dragging Carlos in towards him, crushing him in a fierce, painful hug. He forced all the air from Carlos’s lungs in a single huff, and Carlos collapsed helplessly against him, hands locking behind his neck, heart speeding up wildly in his chest. “Of _course_ that’s fucking. Dude. _Carlos,_ you don’t have to do shit like that for me, or for anyone, _ever_. Please, please don’t think you have to blow a guy for any other reason besides _wanting_ to, ok? Christ.” He let Carlos go after a moment and held him at arms length, gaze still narrowed critically. “You got it?” 

Shaking, nervous, sick, in love, Carlos nodded weakly. “Ok.” 

“Good,” Jay said, yanking his beanie off and carding one hand messily through his hair, fingers snagging through the tangles at the ends. “I can’t believe you.” He rubbed at his temples for a moment before slapping his hat back on, eyes roving over Carlos, studying his face intensely, like he might be able to save him, rewrite his history, if only he could find the seams to his mask. He shook his head, grimacing. “Are you ok?” He said suddenly, eyes getting wide. “The fucker didn’t hurt you, did he?” 

Carlos reeled away from Jay, terrified he might do something stupid if Jay touches him again but he’s not quick enough, and in a flash his shoulders are back in Jay’s hands. “I’m fine,” he promises, flinching. “He was a little rough and my throat was sore afterwards, but besides that I was fine? _Jay,_ let go, it’s ok,” he begged, voice frighteningly desperate. 

Jay wouldn’t have it; he held Carlos’s face between his palms and stared at him critically like he was looking for signs of damage, thumbs coming to rest momentarily at the corners of his mouth, which were a little chapped, a little split. “Christ,” he said again, under his breath, touch warm and terrible. He looked like he wanted to murder someone, he looked like he was going to _kiss_ Carlos, lick into those used, stretched-too-tight edges, soothing the sting with his tongue. Carlos held his breath, hoping, but after a long moment, Jay let him go. “You’ve gotta be careful,” he warned him, eyes dark and mournful like Carlos had never seen them before. “You’re worth a hell of a lot more than those rings.” 

\---

After warm-up and drills, coach splits them up into scrimmage teams, and Carlos is opposite both Jay and Ben, much to his chagrin. The storm is gaining momentum, the thunder close enough for Carlos to feel the collisions resound deep in his bones. He shivers, hoping he’ll survive this scrimmage, feeling very sorry for himself as the rain starts to fall in ernest. 

Coach blows the whistle and Jay is immediately off, wheeling across the field and stealing the ball spectacularly, a streak of blue-brown against so much grey. Carlos blinks, rooted to the ground until suddenly he’s toppling over, Jay’s mallet ricocheting off of the ground mere inches from his face, a splatter of mud in its wake. 

“Foul!” Couch yells. “Jesus Jay, it’s just a scrimmage. Take is easy, these points don’t mean anything, remember?” 

Carlos scrambles to his feet, flecks of mud and grass on his shins and beads of lymph pooling up in a scrape on his left knee. It stings, and his head is pounding. The unshakable sensation of emptiness that’s been weighing him down ever since Jay shouldered him up against the doorway of their room and accused him of fucking Ben reaches a boiling point in his chest, shifting from a dull, lonely sadness to something sharp, feral. 

This whole thing, _all_ of it, is _unfair_. Jay is unfair; he’s acting ridiculous, childish, even cruel. He _wants_ Carlos, and that want is at the root of their whole dynamic, the twisted vine of self loathing and confusion and longing coiled up tight inside Carlos’s solar plexus. He doesn’t have to stand for this shit, he doesn’t have to hang his head and take it while Jay crawls into his bed when it’s convenient, and shoves him away when it’s not. Jay was the one who _told_ him he was worth more than that, years ago after he stained the knees of his favorite white pants. 

Carlos shakes off the ache of falling and jogs into position, poised tight and low, gathered and tense like a spring. The whistle goes off and in seconds, Carlos is upon Jay, tackling him from the front, dragging him down into the mug and getting one good, solid sucker-punch in before _Ben_ of all people pulls him off, panting and rain-slick as he wrestles Carlos from the field. 

“Jay, De Vil,” Coach barks, hands on his hips. “You’re out for the remainder of the scrimmage. You sit on the bench and think about the word ‘team,’ you hear me? After practice is over, ten laps each.” 

“Coach!” Jay complains, padding after him, jersey covered in splotches of mud which bleed in the rain. “You saw that, he jumped me! I had nothing to do with it, I--”

“Fifteen laps for you, Jay. No buts.” 

As Jay strides meaningfully past Carlos, he manages to spit out a hushed “Fuck you,” under his breath. Carlos grits his teeth against it, a bitterness stinging in the back of this throat as he thinks _when and where, Jay. When and where_. After all, he isn’t the one who doesn’t know what he wants.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT FINALLY HAPPENS! Enjoy the porn. And also the sadness.

Coach lectured them, threatened them, suggested they prove they were better than their parents or they’d be booted from the team. Then he sent them off jogging once practice was over, and by the time he completed his third lap, Carlos was thoroughly rain-drenched, his jersey heavy and waterlogged, his cleats soaked through. Jay remained a good ten feet or so ahead of him, nearly disappearing into a dark smear in the storm, but Carlos imagines he was in a similar state, hair a sodden mess, slowing him down. 

Carlos waits for his self-righteous fury to fade into something more sane, more manageable, but it never does. With each successive footfall the tangle of vines in his chest only tightens like a fist poised to strike. His knuckles still sting from impact; he has bruises on his knees and mud caked and gritty under his nails, and he doesn’t _care_. He’s going to confront Jay the first chance he gets; he’s going to end this. 

Carlos finishes first, his legs numb and aching from the cold as he sprints the final stretch to the locker room. It’s empty and eerie inside, his footsteps echoing as he squeaks across the tile floor in wet cleats, leaving a mud-streaked puddle in front of his locker. He stands there for a long time, dripping miserably until Jay shoulders his way in, brash and loud and wet like the storm.

His heart stops and forces its way up into his throat. None of the fury is gone, none of the self loathing, confusion, longing. He spins around to face Jay, and he’s pretty sure they’re going to fight for real this time, fists and nails and teeth. 

“What the fuck did you pull out there?” Jay seethes, his hair slicked across his forehead, so wet it’s black, plastered in strips to his cheeks, his neck. “You almost got me kicked off the tourney team, _you_ might suck but I actually-”

Carlos cuts him off, completely uninterested in what he has to say, sick of his mask, his denial, _all_ of it. He strides across the room towards Jay who backs away instantly, eyes flickering darkly and there it is again, _fear._ Before Jay’s back hits the wall, Carlos shoves him, hard, thumping him against the tile. “You’re so fucking stupid,” he hisses, standing on his toes so his eyes are level with Jay’s, arms braced against the wall on either side of Jay’s head so firmly his elbows shake. “You think I don’t notice?” 

“What are you talking about,” Jay tries to say, but it comes out week, reedy, and his eyes are half-lidded now that Carlos is so close. “Get off me.” 

“No,” Carlos snaps, so deeply into Jay’s space he can smell the rain on his skin, the cold in his hair, the fear on his breath. He wants him more than he knows what to do with, more than he knows how to control and before he can stop himself, his hands are making fists in the wet snags of his hair, his body is flush and narrow and hard against Jay’s, rain-cold, running-hot.

“Fuck,” Jay mumbles, turning his head so Carlos pulls his hair, so his cheek is pressed against the tile wall and he doesn’t have to _look_ at him, doesn’t have to face all that he’s been resisting. “Don’t to this to me, not now,” he pleads, shutting his eyes so that his lashes make a dark curve against his cheek. And maybe he’s turning his head away from Carlos but the rest of him is arching up into him, their hips locking, their bones grinding together and Carlos’s breath is all gone; he’s light-headed and terrified and drunk on hunger. He opens one palm and slides it down the rippling, stubble-rough and sticky-smooth plane of Jay’s throat, down into the neck of his jersey. “Fuck,” Jay prays again, voice rumbling like the thunder outside, shuddering under Carlos’s fingers. 

“What,” Carlos mumbles, grinding against Jay, so dizzy, mouth watering for Jay’s sweat, his breath, anything he can reach. He doesn’t remember why he’s doing this, what he’s trying to prove or what he wants from it, any reasons he had to do this beyond his own blind, long-suffering desire. All his dignity has been washed away in the rain, crushed to dust between the wild, graceless drag of their bodies together. “Are you afraid you might kiss me?” he asks, voice low. 

Jay falters spectacularly, formerly clenched hands flying to palm roughly up Carlos’s back, up under his jersey where his skin is flushed and clammy and confused. He presses his face into Carlos’s neck; he breathes in desperate and ragged before trying to wrench away, shaking. “No,” he lies, so _obviously lying_ it tears at Carlos, makes him feel crazy and scrubbed raw and bleeding. 

“Jay,” he pleads, hands roving down Jay’s ribs, the planes of muscle there drawn tight and twitching and terrified. “Just let me. Let me, please.” 

Gripping one hand on Carlos’s shoulder and threading the other into his hair, Jay tries unconvincingly to push him away, but instead Carlos crumples to his knees, grabbing at Jay’s shorts, twisting desperate fistfuls of wet nylon. He doesn’t care; he’ll take this. He’ll take anything, as long as Jay can’t resist it. He mouths over the cold, perfect strip of skin above Jay’s waistband, golden and dusted in dark hair, pebbled with gooseflesh. He licks up the rain, sucks off the salt, the sweat. “Please,” he murmurs against him, knees skidding against cold, muddy tile. “Just let me.”

Jay says nothing, he just stares down at Carlos gravely. He doesn’t stop him as he hooks his thumbs into his waistband and pulls his shorts down, he just lets out a low, involuntary hiss when Carlos takes the base of his cock in hand, looking up at him eyes dark and wide and desperate and hungry. 

Carlos buries his face between Jay’s thighs and breathes in before he even gets his mouth on him, inhaling from his the sweat-damp thatch of pubic hair, stomach tightening around the perfect, musky rawness of it all, better than he imagined it, better than anything else has ever been in his entire life. Jay’s cock twitches against his cheek, steel-hard and unbearably hot, and as he laps messily up the thick shaft, Jay makes a noise that sounds like it could be a sob. 

“Carlos,” he murmurs, fingers carding through his wet hair, surprisingly tender as they bump against his ear, his pulse, the crown of his skull. “Carlos.” 

Carlos can hardly hear him the blood is pounding so hard in his ears and Jay’s voice is so small, so tired, so torn. He wonders if he’s imagining it, but his stomach still plummets, his hands convulsing involuntarily against the broad, flickering stretch of Jay’s quadriceps. He’s mouthing all over Jay’s cock, so thrilled and turned on and drunk on it he doesn’t even remember how to do this properly. He’s too busy indulging on the way Jay tastes, the way he feels heavy and hot and perfect against his tongue, stretching his lips wide. He sucks at the head, pulling away every few seconds to watch the precum bead at the slit, thin and clear and salty and so so good, before he licks it away.

Jay doesn’t even fuck his mouth, just combs his fingers through his hair over and over again, smoothing it and messing it up, tightening his grip in it every time he gets close, Carlos sucking him down so deep his nose brushes into the coarse dark scrub of hair, gagging around the thickness, wishing he could swallow him whole, wishing he could fit every inch of his body here, in the slick wet heat of his mouth. 

All times they ended up in bed together, it was always Jay touching Carlos while Carlos made fists in the sheets and willed himself to keep from reaching out. He worried that if he touched Jay the spell might break, the whole thing might shatter between them and Jay would quit, shove him off and scold him for making it weird, acting gay, as if the situation _without_ that additional layer was somehow _less_ gay. But now, now that Jay is _letting_ him, he can’t _stop_ touching him. He rubs his hands all over Jay’s thighs, digs his nails in with bruising force, grabs him and rubs at the hard, rippling muscles of his thighs, the segments in his stomach, his abdominals and obliques. Everything twitches and pulses beneath Carlos’s fingers as Jay rocks into his mouth, gathering and flickering under his palms as he gets closer to coming. 

Carlos is cold and his knees are aching, he knows this distantly, but he doesn’t want to stop. He wants to pull up and off of Jay’s dick to keep him from finishing, he wants to spend hours licking and sucking and drowning here, between the tempered power of Jay’s thighs. He wants to kiss Jay, kiss him until neither of them can breathe, years and years of pent up kisses pouring out here in his locker room while the rain buffets the roof. He wants it to go on forever, but before he can withdraw and lead Jay down from the edge, everything capsizes. Jay lets out a muffled cry, doubling over and pulling his fistful of Carlos’s hair, emptying himself into Carlos’s mouth in thick, hot ribbons.

Carlos is too surprised to take it all, choking on the first mouthful and letting some of it drip down his chin and onto the floor while he swallows the rest desperately, tongue lashing at the underside of Jay’s cock as he spills and spills. When he lets Jay slide from his lips he’s gasping, a string of drool still connecting his used mouth to Jay’s still twitching cock. “Fuck,” Jay says again, crumpling to the floor into a mess of shuddering limbs, wet hair, mud. “Fuck.” 

Carlos stares at the few drips of white on the tile, Jay’s come and his spit, combined into a thin, semi-translucent foam. He thinks that if the floor wasn’t filthy with dead grass and mud-grit and rain puddles, he would lick it up. He thinks that he’s pathetic, that he’s a dog, love-starved and begging for things he can never have, not really, not fully. He thinks he might have made a mistake.But he’s too hard to care, aching in his shorts and his stomach unbearably knotted up. He can’t care about any of it one bit. 

He glances at Jay and finds him slumped against the wall, head in his hands. “Fuck,” Jay says for the hundredth time, voice muffled and anguished. 

Carlos nods, knowing there’s nothing else to say about any of this. 

\---

A few moments pass, the air taut and humid and filled with the sounds of labored breath, the hollow pattering of rain outside. Carlos pants heavily, watching Jay’s slumped shoulders shake so subtly he could be imagining it. Other than that tiny tremor, Jay isn’t moving. His face is hidden and his body is bunched up into a defensive slouch, and Carlos worries that if he waits for him to recover, he might be waiting an eternity. He swallows nervously, still dazed and shaking with arousal as he crawls on his hands and knees across the wet stretch of tile between them until he’s right in front of Jay. 

“Jay?” he asks, reaching out with cold and tremulous fingers, resting them on Jay’s forearm. “Are you ok?” 

“No,” Jay’s voice comes out muffled, crushed. He wrenches away from Carlos’s touch like it burns. 

“Will you look at me?” Carlos asks, canting closer to Jay, still so drunk on sensation he can’t keep away from him, his drive to self-preserve completely frayed to nothingness. At first he thinks Jay is going to ignore him and he’s gonna have to pry him apart, but then Jay lifts his gaze, eyes wide and stricken and blood-shot, shining with a terrible wetness. He looks really, really mad, and if Carlos were in his right mind he might shy away, but he’s not. He’s still compromised, still slow-moving and dazed, and he can’t do anything but blink at Jay, struck dumb.

In a blur of limbs and mud, Jay stumbles to his feet and away from Carlos, head in his hands, teeth grit like a skull’s smile. “I have to stop,” he mumbles, mostly to himself, backing clumsily towards his locker, nearly slipping on the rain-slick tile. “I can’t.” 

_“Jay,_ ” Carlos begs, scrambling to his feet and following Jay across the room, pushing desperately back into his orbit. He reaches out, only to get smacked firmly away. “Jay _please._ ”

Carlos moves to try and touch him again, and as his fingers close around Jay’s forearm, something cosmic snaps, comes apart, frays at the seams. Suddenly, Jay turns on his heel and bears down on Carlos. His eyes are spilling over with pupil, black and flashing and wild, his pulse speeding up under Carlos’s grip as he advances towards him, quick and lethal.

Jay’s control shatters, and in seconds he has Carlos up against the wall, slamming him into the tile so harshly the air thuds out of Carlos’s lungs with a muted _oomph._ Jay jams his forearm into Carlos’s throat, trapping him and silencing any protest, their brows grinding together with a sheen of sweat and rain. “Stop,” he says under his breath, even though Carlos isn’t _doing_ anything; he can’t move or even breathe properly with Jay cutting off his airway and holding him fast. “Stop,” he repeats, and it’s unclear if he’s talking to Carlos or to himself, his eyes dark and unfocused and terrified, thrusting messily, convulsively, like he doesn’t know how to stop.

Carlos’s vision gives way to a shimmering white as he struggles to breathe, and with a pang of heat coiling in his gut he realizes that he’s never been more turned on in his _life_. His cock throbs between their bodies, hard and insistent as Jay presses into him, arms locked up as he chokes Carlos against the wall, pleading uselessly for someone, anyone, anything, to stop. Carlos gasps, drools, rolls his hips, and again, Jay loses control. 

“What are you doing to me,” Jay asks him in a voice like a scrape, mouth suddenly hot and wet and open on Carlos’s jaw as he paws up under his jersey, palm wide and mauling over his heaving stomach, his ribs. He thumbs across Carlos’s nipple, hissing and digging his teeth deep into his pulse as it hardens under his touch. “Fuck,” he prays, voice low and rough. “Want you so, so bad it scares me.” 

He finally lets up the pressure on Carlos’s throat, allowing him to suck in air nosily, eyes streaming, drool bubbling over his lower lip. “Jay,” he rasps, pushing himself into the wild heat of Jay’s hands. “You have me. You can just _take_ me, if you want, you can--”

“I can’t,” Jay says, shaking his head, licking deep and hungry into Carlos’s pulse, breath so heavy and labored it makes Carlos shiver. 

“Why not?” 

“Just can’t,” he says again, still and final. 

“Will you just _kiss_ me then?” Carlos pleads, hating the way his voice comes out keening and sharp, whittled to a fine point, so obvious, so pathetic. Jay regards him for a moment with those all-black eyes, so half-lidded and heavy, throat bobbing as he stares and stares and tries, maybe, to resist before he fails. 

Jay’s breath is falling in wild, desperate huffs all over Carlos’s swollen mouth for a heartbeat before he lashes out, licking Carlos’s lower lip, his teeth, his chin, rough and animal before he breaks completely. “Fuck,” he hisses, wincing like he’s in pain. Then, finally, Jay take’s Carlos’s chin in hand and kisses him.

Hard and so deep it hurts, wet like a flood and hot like metal in the sun and Carlos feels like he’s breaking apart under it, lips parting under Jay’s, hands clutching madly at his jersey to drag him closer. Jay groans into the kiss, licking up into Carlos’s mouth, stealing his breath, sucking on his tongue, grinding against him with messy, graceless thrusts. 

They make out for what feels like a long, long time. Carlos keeps thinking Jay is going to stop and freak out, shove off of him and realize what he’s doing before he slugs Carlos and runs away, but it doesn’t happen. Every time Jay pauses it’s just to look at Carlos, eyes somehow hazy and too-bright all at once, hair a rucked up mess and lips lewd and wet and swollen and chewed, a crushed shape shining with spit. He keeps thumbing over Carlos’s mouth, dragging their brows together before dipping back down into him like he can’t get enough, like he’s wanted this as badly and for as long as Carlos has, which seems impossible, but _feels_ true. 

After awhile, Carlos makes himself stop worrying. He’s too hard and too blissed out to think about how temporary this probably is; he just wants to be present and drowning in every second of it, just wants to kiss Jay for as long as he can before reality somehow seeps back into him. He wants to memorize the taste of his spit, he wants the feeling of his lips indelibly burnt into his skin so that when this is over, he can touch the scar and remember. 

At some point Jay works his knee in between Carlos’s thighs, groaning as he feels him hard and pulsing and hot against his skin. He pulls away long enough to get close to Carlos’s ear, breath all heat and chaos, making Carlos whine against him. “Can you come like this?” he asks, pressing his knee deliberately into Carlos, making a sharp, involuntary sound when Carlos gasps. 

“Yeah,” Carlos tells him, mouthing over his pulse, his throat. “Just keep kissing me.” 

Jay catches his mouth again, kissing and kissing him until Carlos is whimpering against his lips, body jerking messily as he rides the solidity of Jay’s thigh to finish. Even then, with his legs weak and shaking and the rest of him wavering like a flame as he comes, Jay holds him up, kissing him deep and hungry, hands in his hair, teeth in his lower lip. 

They kiss as Carlos’s come gets cold and sticky in his shorts, they kiss until the rain stops and Jay finally murmurs, “We’re gonna get in trouble. Someone’s gonna wonder where we are.” 

Carlos nods, shuddering against the wall, in the cage of Jay’s arms. He doesn’t know what’s happening to his body; he feels feverish, impossibly cold and hot at the same time, dizzy and flushed and confused. He knows they should get back and he should change from his filthy wet jersey and shower the storm off of his skin, but he _knows_ in the deepest corner of his heart that once they leave this locker room, everything will change.

They’re in a vacuum right now, preserved in amber, locked away from the world and all the consequences that come along with it. If they leave, he might never have Jay again, not like this. Whatever magic that shattered Jay’s resolve could be limited to these particular circumstances, the rain and the locker room and the blow job, Carlos begging on his knees like a child. The stars might never line up again, and it doesn’t seem _worth_ it to risk that, to let go of it all in favor of dinner, a bed, a shower. He wants to stop time, but he’s not a magician. 

Jay pulls away from him, eyes downcast and cheeks very flushed, and Carlos notices his hands are shaking, too. “I know,” Carlos says eventually. There are a lot of things he wants to add, pleading things, hollow promises and impossible questions. _I don’t want to leave. I don’t care if we get in trouble, I don’t care about anything else. Just please, Jay, keep kissing me like you don’t know how to stop. Please, please. I can’t go back to being just friends after this, I don’t know how._

Carlos rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands and says none of it. They walk back to the dorms, far enough away from one another no one crossing campus would look twice and mistake them for friends.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some frank conversations.

Their room seems cold and strange and un-lived in when they get there. Jay left a window open before practice and the rain managed to sneak its way inside, dampening the sill and the carpet beneath in with a fine spray. Carlos shuts the window solemnly, shivering in the chill and completely unable to look at Jay, to search his eyes for fear or regret in this new setting, out of the storm, out of the locker room. He stares at his cleats and toes them off beside the bathroom door, and from somewhere else in the room Jay mumbles, “You can have first shower.” He tugs his shirt off over his head just as Carlos risks a glance up, revealing his chest and his back, both scraped pink from Carlos’s nails. 

Stomach roiling, Carlos stumbles on auto-pilot to the bathroom, and manages to lock the door behind him before he throws up into the sink. Just a frothy, acidic mouthful of Jay’s spit, Jay’s come, burning and bitter as he spits over and over again. He lets steam fill up the bathroom, rinsing his mouth mechanically as tears leak out of the tails of his eyes, wondering what he can possibly do to fix this mess. 

\---

Carlos curls up in his bed once his shower is over, bedded down under the comforter, knowing he should go get Dude from Evie but feeling too exhausted and and empty to move. His throat is tight and his heart rabbits nervously at every noise, every mundane, muted sound Jay is making in the bathroom while he showers. Before Carlos can do anything, he needs to see what he’s broken; he needs to assess the collateral damage of whatever he and Jay have just done. 

He hears Jay shut the water off and towel himself dry before the bathroom door swings open, and he’s half-certain Jay’s going to ignore him completely in favor of collapsing into bed, refusing to talk to Carlos about what’s changed between them, chasing the storm with sleep. Instead, he feels Jay approach him tentatively, smelling clean and fresh as he sinks onto the edge of Carlos’s bed. He sits there beside him without actually touching him, a few inches away from the curl of his spine. He doesn’t say anything for a long time, he just _sits_ , radiating warmth from the shower. 

Carlos wants to roll over and look at him, but he can’t. He feels cemented into place, like he might gag if he moves, like he might start crying or something equally horrible. He focuses on breathing evenly, counting his inhalations until Jay finally sighs, swallowing noisily before he breaks the silence. “You know, I thought that maybe things would change here. That there would be so many girls, princesses and stuff, that I would stop wanting you so bad.” 

His words hang in the air, so vulnerable they sting to hear, making Carlos’s heart clench and beat hard against his ribcage. He waits for more, but it doesn’t come, and he supposes this is as close to a confession as he might ever get from Jay. He inhales raggedly and asks, “Did you stop? Wanting me, I mean.” 

Jay makes a noise, something halfway between a cough and a humorless laugh. He shifts and the mattress creaks under his weight. “Obviously not,” he says. 

Carlos swallows again and again, trying in vain to chase the lump in his throat down. He’s so overwhelmed he doesn’t know what to feel; he’s believed with such intense, self-hating certainty that Jay would never want him that hearing it laid out like that, raw and bare boned, is almost impossible to process. “I didn’t know you wanted me,” he admits after awhile, eyes shut tight, face half-buried in his pillow. “Until, like, yesterday. I always thought it was just me, hung up on this totally unrequited thing.” 

Jay is quiet, and then he lets out a frustrated huff of air. “That seems impossible. Dude. I end up in your bed every time my inhibitions are even the slightest bit lowered, have you not _noticed_ that? I’ve had like, the shittiest self-control with this thing.” 

Carlos makes a small, outraged noise, heart thudding so far into his throat it’s hard to breathe. “Of _course_ I noticed. Don’t fucking patronize me, Jay. Don’t act like you’ve been so _obvious_ , all you do it talk about how many girls you’ve fucked and which ones you’re planning to fuck next-” he sputters out, cutting himself off because there’s so much more ready to spill over the surface, years worth of hurt and jealousy and self-deprecation, thing’s he’s not ready for Jay to know about him. He sucks in air, then lets it shudder out. “It’s just confusing.” 

A few moments pass before Jay starts talking again, and when he does his voice is hard, raw, honest. It digs thorns into Carlos’s chest, makes him chew hard on his own lip to keep himself from leaking tears onto his pillowcase. “I know,” Jay says flatly. “I know. It’s fucked up. I keep finding girls, hoping that if I find enough or if I find the right one, it’ll stop being you that I think about when I jack off. That it’ll stop being you I think about when I imagine myself being happy in the future. It’s so, so fucked up, but it’s just you. It’s always you. I don’t know how to stop, dude. I don’t know what you want me to say.” 

Carlos blinks, stunned by everything Jay’s saying. _I don’t know what you want me to say_ echoes in his head, and he wishes he had the words to explain that this _is_ what he wants Jay to say, this is the whole of it, everything he’s ever craved from Jay that he thought with such conviction he could never have. He hates himself for not knowing sooner, he hates Jay for not telling him. Now everything is messy and broken; they’re so far away from home, so far he doesn’t even know who he is anymore. He wipes his nose, inhaling raggedly. “You think about me when you jack off?” he says eventually, letting himself uncurl a little bit, working towards the eventual task of rolling over. 

“I try not to,” Jay says after a while, voice muffled like he’s hiding his face in his hands, shamed, regretful. “But I always end up doing it anyway.” 

Carlos makes himself breathe, makes himself confess. He sighs, eyes shut tight and stomach dropping as he admits, “I’ve been in love with you since I was eleven.” 

Jay is very, very quiet, a near-silence that aches. It forces Carlos to repeat his own words over and over again in his head, the stupid, blood-steeped truth, foolish and pathetic. The confession feels heavy where it sits in the air between them, like a stone sinking into the sea. “I know,” Jay says eventually, voice small. 

“I knew you knew,” Carlos tells him, hating how wounded he sounds, how much his hurt is bleeding into his words and staining them black. “But you never did anything about it, which is _why_ I thought you obviously _didn’t_ want me like that.” 

“I did. Do.” 

“Then _why_ didn’t you tell me?” Carlos asks, pulling the covers violently over his head, muffling his own voice with them. “Why didn’t you kiss me until I basically _made_ you, why are you _still_ trying to pretend that you aren’t--”

“Christ, Carlos,” Jay snaps, like Carlos should _know_ , like he expects him to understand his stupid straight person logic. “Because you deserve someone _way_ better! Mal and E and I are fucked up for life, but you’re not _like_ us, you’ve always been different. You should be with a guy like Ben, someone all _good_ and blonde and perfect and upstanding. A guy who isn’t freaked out to be seen with another guy.” 

Carlos wipes his nose, very glad that his back is to Jay and that he can’t see him right now, that he isn’t witnessing Jay’s half-lies and self-righteous bullshit with his own eyes. “That’s what this is _really_ about,” he says. “You’re not trying to _save me_ from your villainy or something, dude. You’re just afraid you like a guy. It’s as simple as that, don’t _pretend_ you think I deserve better than you or something. I _know_ you, you’re selfish. You’re a jerk.” 

Jay laughs a hollow laugh, caught. Carlos can imagine him vividly right now, his sheepish smile, his hasty apologetic shrug. Part of him wants to roll over and pin him to the mattress and bite that self-effacing look from his face, the other part of him is well aware he still can’t move properly. He settles for chewing on a wad of his blankets, channelling all his frustration into his teeth, his clutching hands. “Okay,” Jay says after awhile. “You’re right, I’m a jerk. And also a coward, apparently. But I’m not _fucking_ lying about the rest of it either. You’re way better than this, Carlos, better than me or any other guy who’s scared to hold your hand in public or whatever. I don’t think that’s something I could offer you, which sucks. You deserve that. You deserve everything.” 

Carlos sobs weakly around his mouthful of blanket. “Stop saying that.” 

“No,” Jay argues. “Never. I’ve been telling you that forever, ever since you blew that douchebag a the marketplace and I wanted to kill him for like, three weeks afterwards. It’s just true, ok? So shut up.” 

They lie in silence for a long time. Carlos keeps thinking that Jay is going to get up and leave, but he stays stubbornly next to him, stiffly rooted to the edge of the bed. After a few minutes of breathing evenly and replaying everything that had happened in the locker room over and over in his head until his stomach is an acidic mess of nerves again, Carlos manages to roll onto his back, eyes locked firmly on the ceiling. “You don’t get to decide what’s good for me or what isn’t, or what I deserve,” he says eventually. 

“I guess not,” Jay answers. 

“I don’t care if you hold my hand in public. I don’t even want that, I just want...god. I don’t know. I want you to quit _stopping yourself_ from feeling whatever you feel. I just want you, however you are.” 

“I’m a jerk,” Jay reminds him. “That’s how I am. You said so yourself.” 

Carlos finally rolls over to face Jay, squinting at him through bleary eyes. He’s still flushed from the shower, hair damp and soft and clean-smelling, chest bare and so smooth looking and Carlos almost forgives him everything right there, wanting so badly to just squirm across the divide between them and seal their mouths again. He makes do by licking his lips, eyes fluttering closed for a moment so he can keep talking. “If you don’t want to do this, why did you kiss me?Why did you let me _blow_ you?” he asks. 

“Because I couldn’t fucking stop myself, I couldn’t stand it,” Jay admits plainly. “I was totally done for. Sorry.”

Carlos opens his eyes, gaze falling on the rapid, unsteady rise and fall of Jay’s ribcage, so much golden skin stretched tight over bone and muscle, perfect and bronze and marked up from his own nails. He swallows, still so stunned that any of this is happening, that Jay is in his bed, that Jay came down his throat so recently his tongue is still tingling from it. “I still can’t believe you _like_ me like that,” Carlos mumbles, blinking slowly. “This whole thing kind of feels like it can’t be real.”

“Well, I do,” Jay grumbles. “Wish so badly I didn’t, but I just do. I can’t stop, it’s really stupid.” 

“What are you going to do about it?” Carlos asks. “Do you think you can go back to pretending you’re some ladies’ man whose best friend is in love with him? After I sucked your dick?” Without meaning to, Carlos’s lips quirk up into a half-smile as he says it, remembering it all, the wild perfect terror of it, the dizzying power he had over Jay when he was between his thighs. 

“Fuck, no,” Jay says, shifting down the bed so he’s lying beside Carlos rather than sitting up against the backboard, their faces almost level. His eyes are flashing and scared and wanting and his tongue keeps sweeping nervously over his lips, which are still swollen, still so _ruined._ Carlos’s heart starts pounding. He can see Jay’s uncertainly showing through in the color on his cheeks, the shift of his eyelashes as he blinks too much. “We ruined everything,” Jay adds, voice low, quiet, kind of hopeful. 

Carlos pokes at the corner of his mouth with his tongue, staring at Jay’s lips, wanting them so bad, wanting them all over his chest, his ribs, his cock. He wonders if Jay will even do that for him or if he’s too scared of his desire and everything it means for them, he wonders how much of himself Jay can lose to the sway of this before he shatters. 

Stomach flipping over, Carlos reaches out carefully, fingers brushing against the pout of Jay’s lower lip. Jay’s eyes slide shut immediately, lids trembling over a frantic tremor, and Carlos makes himself ask “will you let me again?” 

Before he can get out the words _or was that the last time?_ Jay is upon him, pinning him down to the mattress with one broad hand on his throat, the other on his hip, drawing him close, his mouth all over Carlos in a rain of deep, biting kisses. 

“This is such a bad idea,” Jay pants in between hungry drags of his lips, the kind that make Carlos spread out beneath him, weak and melted and shaking. “I was never supposed to let it _go_ this far, dude, I tried so hard,” he mumbles, a half-crushed sob wracking out of him as he mouths over Carlos’s neck, his ear, his wild pulse. 

“Stop trying,” Carlos tells him, hands clawing down his back, rubbing up his biceps, curling tight around his wrists. “Just stop.” 

And at least for a moment, Jay does.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the second to last chapter! Ben resolution, and some developments with Jay and Carlos. Thank you everyone who has been reading. If you're sad about this story ending, know that I have another multi-chaptered Jaylos that's much happier and sweeter coming soon ;)

Jay is better at doing whatever they’re doing in darkness. If the lights are out and the sun is down, Jay almost touches Carlos like he’s not afraid to, with palms wide and certain, his mouth a crushed, half-smiling shape between kisses, like this is something he can actually _smile_ about, if only in the dark. It’s surprising and confusing, but Carlos will take what he can get. He’d rather take Jay in shadows than not at all. 

By day, they’re the same as they always were. They sit side by side while they have lunch with their friends, they walk to classes together, they partner up for drills when they have practice on Mondays and Wednesdays. Jay thinks he’s a good actor, but Carlos can tell things have changed. Jay doesn’t touch him as blindly and as frequently as he used to. The constant goading and wrestling and playful fighting has dwindled into the occasional arm punch or flick on the ear, all of which seem forced, now, heavy with meaning. Carlos thinks it makes them more obvious. Jay doesn’t. 

By night, they develop a routine of sorts. After tourney is over and they’ve had dinner, after Carlos has walked Dude and they’ve both finished their homework, the air in their room changes. It gets tense and hot between them, suddenly electrified. Carlos knows what’s coming. Sometimes he can brush his teeth and climb into bed before Jay is upon him, other times Jay can’t wait and he’ll just go flick off the lights when Carlos is in the middle of something, then fumble towards him in the dark with needy palms, grabbing him and roughing him up, pushing him toward his bed so he can climb atop him and grind him deep into cold sheets. 

Carlos lets him do what he wants, when he wants it. He sometimes wishes he had the will or the self-respect to demand something _more_ of Jay, to force him out into the light, but he can’t even make himself care, much less act on it. He’s not even sure he _wants_ more. It’s not important to him that his friends know, or that he and Jay are perceived differently, or that Jay stops being afraid. There’s something in the violence and fervency of his fear that makes Carlos feel so _wanted_ , so powerful. If Jay weren’t scared, would he want Carlos as badly, as dangerously? Maybe the fear is what puts the teeth in his kisses, what makes Carlos feel torn to bits by the sway of his hunger. 

He doesn’t need a _boyfriend_ , he doesn’t even really know what that means, what it looks like here, across the water and under the sun. What he does know is that the way things are now are better than Jay’s breath sweet and boozy with stolen liquor, are better than the way things were _before_. Or, at least he _thinks_ they’re better. Maybe he’s just stupidly, blithely thrilled to get Jay in whatever ways he can, maybe he wants Jay badly and blindly enough he doesn’t know exactly _how_ he wants him. 

He does know that whatever is happening has him perpetually reeling with sensation. He loves that Jay can’t resist him properly anymore, he loves that Jay gets clumsy and rough, his hands trembling as they reach for Carlos in the dark to pry him apart to feel him along all his seams, desperate fingers tracing the slats of his ribs, shoving beneath the drawstring of his sweat pants to grope blindly at the heat of him. He loves that even after it’s over and they’ve both come, lying side by side in one of their beds with chests heaving and sides adhered with a patina of sweat, Jay _stays_ , hands wandering, lips at his ear. 

“You smell so good,” he murmurs sometimes, face buried in the junction between Carlos’s neck and shoulder, lapping idly at his pulse. “Can hardly stand it.” 

Carlos smiles, then, in the dark, thankful Jay can’t see the wild glow of elation across his face, glad he’s not as visibly raw and vulnerable as he feels. He rolls over to face Jay, catching the flash of his eyes with his own, regarding him there in the shadows and like this, they could almost be normal. Just two guys, two friends in love, without a whole history of cruelty and violence etched into them across the water, back home. _The Island_ , Carlos thinks, since lately he can’t bring himself to really call it home. He traces his fingers up Jay’s forearm and asks, “you remember that day after practice, when I hung out with Ben and you freaked out?” 

Jay bristles, something in his jaw flickering as he swallows. “Yeah,” he mumbles. “I do.” 

“All we did was talk. About the island, and our different upbringings, and stuff. In case you wanted to know,” Carlos explains. It lingers awkwardly in the air between them for a moment, Jay nodding quietly as he listens. 

“I wasn’t sure I wanted to know,” he says after awhile, shifting and settling a little closer to Carlos along the narrow mattress, hair strewn messily all over his pillow, stuck to the corner of his mouth. Carlos suppresses the urge to reach out and brush it away; he doesn’t want to discourage Jay from talking, and sometimes touch is enough to silence him. Jay will pause for a long time between statements and Carlos has learned to sit quietly, patiently, trying to blend into the darkness so Jay can forget he’s there and confess to the night. Finally, Jay adds, “I’m glad I know now though.” 

“The whole time we were talking, he _was_ kind of flirting. But all I could think about was you,” he admits. He laughs a little then, and it comes out weak and broken, more of a cough than a laugh at all. “It’s so stupid.” 

Jay draws him close, reaching across the bed and dragging Carlos tight against his chest, nails at his back, mouth all over his face. “Not as stupid as how jealous it makes me to think about you even _flirting_ with Ben.” He fists into Carlos’s hair so he can pull hs head back to expose his throat, and there he sucks a small, deliberate spot of color into the hollow beneath his clavicle, too low for any of his clothes to reveal it. In shadows, in darkness. Carlos knows that tomorrow, his fingers will find this spot and press into it every few seconds, glad for a mark, glad for the ache of a bruise to remind him that Jay is real. “Just, like, want you all to myself,” Jay mumbles, breath hot and messy across Carlos’s sternum. 

“Only in private,” Carlos reminds him. “Only if no one else knows.” 

Jay makes muted, wordless noise, teeth scraping against Carlos’s collarbone. “I know, that’s why it’s stupid.” 

“It’s just _unfair_ ,” Carlos explains, squirming, his skin so over-sensitized under Jay’s sharp mouth. “That you give a shit what I do with other guys, but won’t take ownership or even _admit_ to what you do with me. Like, why do you care so much? Why is it so _bad_ if Mal and Evie or whoever else knew about this?” 

“Why do you _want_ them to know?” 

“I don’t, not really. It’s not like I need to tell people or make out with you all over campus for this to be real. It’s just. I dunno. Feels like you’re ashamed of me, of this, and you’re gonna _leave_ for something better. Easier.” Carlos chokes a little as it comes out, heart thudding nervously now that the truth is out, raw and bleeding and ugly. That he doesn’t care who knows, he doesn’t want Jay in public. He just wants Jay _for good._

Jay sighs, letting go of Carlos just so he can thump him back down into the mattress and roll on top of him, crushing the air from his lungs with the weight of his body, heavy and solid and perfect and warm, grip biting into his shoulders. “You don’t understand, because you’re gay. It’s different for me.” 

“Why, because you’re _not_ gay? You’re not gay but you can’t keep your hands off me, you--”

Jay cuts Carlos off with his lips, kissing him hard, deep, choking him to silence with his tongue. As he pulls away, he bites Carlos’s lower lip fiercely, eliciting a ripped noise from deep inside him. It stings, all of it. “I’m _not_ gay,” he explains, breath hot and damp against Carlos’s face, making his eyes flutter closed. “It’s just you, ok. Just you. I can’t explain it, either.” 

“And you’re not gonna bolt? For something better?” He asks, voice a hushed, messy thing in the humid space between their parted lips. 

Jay shakes his head, hair tickling against Carlos’s bare chest. “Not yet,” he says. “It’s too good. Can’t possibly be anything better. And yeah, maybe easier, but not better.” 

And it makes Carlos feel so special and moved and full of butterflies he has nothing to say to that, he just nods and swallows the lump in his throat and lets Jay kiss him until he forgets it all. Forgets that it’s unfair, that it’s stupid, that it’s fucked up to stay in the dark like this wondering what’s gonna happen when he stops being too good to resist. To stay in the dark thumbing over his bruises and pretending their scars. 

\--

Days before Ben serenades Mal on the Tourney field, he brushes his knuckles against the small of Carlos’s back as they’re changing from their uniforms after practice. Carlos jumps, skin tingling from the contact, breath huffing out fast. He’s not used to being touched in the daylight, and the contact makes his mind race through a mess of improbable images: walking hand in hand with Ben through the halls or Auradon Prep, kissing him on the cheek in the dining hall, Ben’s face flushed and smiling at Carlos from across class room. Stupid day dreams, things he could never have in the real world, things not _meant_ for him. He coughs, shaking his head. “What’s up?” he asks Ben, cheeks still hot as he recovers. 

“Have a minute? I’d love to take another walk with you,” Ben asks, gaze flicking to the floor of the locker room before they sweep back up, brilliantly blue, pure and perfect. Carlos thinks of his own skinned knees skidding and cold on the same floor as he craned his neck to suck Jay off. He thinks of the mud, the rain, the droplets of white which fell from his swollen lips. They’re comforting things to think about now, because they remind him what he _is_ meant for. 

“Sure,” he says, and slams his locker door. 

\---

They walk side by side along the edge of the field, and Ben wastes no time with small talk. Carlos is thankful for it, his stomach in so many confused knots all he can do is swallow thickly, listening. 

“When I was learning about your class on the Island trying to decide who I was going to pick to come to Auradon, It wasn’t a totally fair or unbiased decision,” he admits, looking a little strained, a little sheepish. “I’d been having dreams. Like, premonition dreams. I don’t know if you believe in that kind of thing, I know I didn’t until it started happening to me, but. Yeah.” 

“What kind of premonitions?” Carlos asks warily, arms crossed over his chest as they move from the field to the forest just beyond it. It feels like shifting into safer, more neutral territory for some reason, and Carlos is reminded of the way Jay always shuts off the lights before he finds Carlos’s mouth in the dark. He shoves the thought out of his mind, sick of the way every single thing seems to relate back to Jay, like sewers all feeding back into the same dirty ocean. 

“I’m not sure. What they meant, anyway. But...Mal was in them,” he admits, cheeks coloring. He risks a glance at Carlos, like he’s trying to read his reaction to Mal’s name, like Carlos might be hurt or jealous. And maybe he _would_ be, if every sewer didn’t feed back into the same dirty ocean. Ben continues, seemingly encouraged by Carlos’s silence. “I didn’t know it was her yet, but as soon as I saw her picture in the student records, I knew. That I’d been _dreaming_ of Malefecient’s daughter, of all people, dreaming about her every night and waking up with this feeling of...purpose. I dunno. It sounds stupid, right?” 

Carlos shrugs. “It sounds weird, yeah. But not stupid. What do you think it means? That you guys are, like, _destined_ to be together or something?” 

Ben turns very pink, and shrugs a stilted shrug. “I don’t know. But I do know that after I break up with Audrey, feel like I owe it to myself, or at least my subconscious, to find out.” He stops walking for a moment, hands shoved in his pockets as he looks Carlos up and down, like he’s waiting for something to happen, something to change. 

Carlos smiles, kind of relieved in a way he can’t name. It feels good, maybe, to alleviate the pressure of something strange, beautiful, golden, pressing him towards the light. It feels good, maybe, to accept that he is a thing from the sewer, from the dirty ocean, and all he can ever hope for or be happy with is Jay’s half-smiles and rough palms in the dark where he belongs. “Are you breaking up with me before you ever asked me out?” He asks Ben, raising an eyebrow, grinning. 

Ben laughs. “I’m...letting you know what I plan on doing after I break up Audrey. But also...never say never, right? I mean. I don’t know. Mal hates me, so it’s not like it’s going to go anywhere. I just wa- _need_ to know why she’s in my dreams all the time. It feels like something I have to do.” 

“I get it,” Carlos says, shrugging. “And I wouldn’t say Mal _hates_ you. Just. She hates everyone, kind of.” 

Ben nods, smile softening warmly at the corners. After a moment he asks, “so that’s why I chose her to come to Auradon. You want to know why I chose you?” 

Carlos shrugs. “Because I seem like a good candidate for redemption?” 

Ben shakes his head. “Maybe. But mostly, because I thought you were cute.” He cuts his gaze to the ground, then reaches out and gently shoves Carlos’s shoulder. “I guess all those stereotypes about princes being shallow have some foundation in truth.” 

Widening his eyes, Carlos feels his voice get lodged in his throat, silencing him for a moment. It still seems _impossible_ that Ben can admit his attraction so easily, so _painlessly,_ when Jay is nothing but pain. Pain and fear and rage, pouring out into Carlos whenever the lights are off, dammed up inside him whenever they aren’t. Carlos coughs, then mumbles, “Thanks, man. Like, really. It’s really nice of you.” 

“Not nice, just true. Thought you should know,” Ben adds. 

Carlos nods curtly, and they start back towards campus, standing somewhat closer than Carlos and Jay stand when they’re walking together, which strikes him as incredibly unfair, incredibly ironic. “Hey Ben?” He says after awhile, staring at the ground. 

“Yeah?” 

“Why did you choose Jay? To come to Auradon, I mean.” As soon as he says it he feels flayed open, exposed for infection. He’s _sure_ Ben must know why he’s asking, and grits his teeth against the inevitable questioning. 

Ben shrugs easily. “Because you two were close friends. We thought it would be advantageous to bring friends, so I chose you and Mal initially and then Evie and Jay were the remainder of your group so yeah.”

Carlos is not sure why, but this information makes his mouth twist up into an involuntary smile, makes his stomach drop. It feels cosmic, maybe, that Jay is only here in Auradon because Ben thought Carlos was cute enough to invite across the sea. That Jay is only here in Auradon because he’s linked inextricably and indisputably with Carlos, so much so that Ben _knew._

On the way up to his dorm, Carlos thinks about premonitions, and wondering if he should start to believe in them. 

\---

That night, Carlos straddles Jay’s hips, grinding solidly into him, thighs splayed wide and aching. Beneath him Jay looks unreal in the moonlight, silver and shining in sweat, begging and broken and Carlos’s heart feels kind of broken, too, crushed to dust under the weight of the dark. Without thinking too hard about it, he leans forward onto his hands and knees, then reaches for Jay’s bedside lamp. He flicks it on, and the room floods with light, making them squint. 

Jay covers his eyes with one hand, his exposed body with the other, reaching for the hot, wet place where they are sliding and grinding together. “What are you doing?” He barks, trying to twist away. 

“I wanted to see you,” Carlos admits, dragging Jay’s hands away from his skin, pinning them to his wrecked sheets. “Just let me, ok?” Jay quits struggling, and looks up at him, still blinking so hard his eyes are bunched half-shut, face crumpled. Carlos smooths a palm over his forehead. “Just let me.” 

Jay’s face softens, and after a moment, he does.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter! Thank you everyone whose been reading and reviewing, it means a lot. I'm stunned I managed to end this thing happily, that's not my usual MO. This is one of the sappiest and sweetest endings in my entire body of work, I think. Thanks again and enjoy!

After they choose good, Carlos wonders if he knows anything about honor or wickedness or what he’s meant for, what’s meant for him. After all, he always thought there was no choice in the matter. That he was born into villainy and that was where he would inevitably stay, for better or for worse, his blood forever blackened by where and who he had come from. But now, he’s realizing there’s _always_ a choice. He doesn’t have to wear black white and red for the rest of his life, he doesn’t _have_ to stay in the shadows, deeming himself undeserving of anything better. Furthermore, Auradon isn’t all golden princes and the Island isn’t all sore throats and bruised knees. The darkness is built from many things, as is the light, and neither is truly, simply good or bad. Goodness is not in Auradon and not inside him; it is in the choices Carlos chooses to make. 

He’s still figuring it out, but he feels like he’s onto something. That he’s learning a lot about himself in exploring this grey area, this dirty ocean separating two worlds defined not by goodness or rottenness but by choices. Blonde beautiful boys like Ben fall truthfully and sincerely for girls like Mal. Dogs aren’t all murderous beasts, they’re actually really great foot-warmers on cold mornings. Jay is not gay, Jay is afraid, but maybe, possibly, could love Carlos back, if he let himself. 

\---

After they choose good, Jay changes, too. Makes his own choices. Carlos notices it in little things, shifts so small and subtle he wonders if he’s projecting, at first. Touch light and fleeting, lingering glances and a new warmth to his eyes, like he’s not afraid to really _look_ at Carlos during the day, like he’s not as worried about what might show up in the black of his pupil if his gaze lingers too long. One afternoon they’re heading out of class and Jay slings his arm around Carlos shoulders, lips brushing so briefly and so softly against the line of Carlos’s cheekbone he almost misses it, wonders later if it happened at all, fingers rising to smooth across the skin at the memory. 

But then it happens again, after Carlos miraculously scores a goal during a tourney game. Jay rushes him in on the field, grabs him tight around the waist and kisses him square and fierce and wet on the cheek, chin damp with sweat as he pulls Carlos into his jaw. He wrenches back with eyes wide and flint-black after squeezing him, eyebrows raised like he surprised himself a little, scared himself even, but made the choice anyway. Carlos stares back, chest full of wild tangles as he feels the sunlight beating down on his back. 

And his smile feels infinite in these moments, splitting his face in two whenever Jay does anything he wouldn’t have done before, whenever Jay makes a choice like he made the choice to stay in Auradon, as if Carlos is somehow aligned with goodness, rather than something in opposition to it. It feels amazing, hot and electric like Jay’s palm on the small of his back during lunch, like Jay carding a hand through his hair in the library while they work on an essay together, like Jay taking a deep breath and resting his fingers on the inseam of Carlos’s pants as they sit side by side on the floor of the girls’ room while Evie models a new outfit, keeping it there, even when she notices and shoots Carlos an an amused, surprised look when she thinks Jay’s not looking. 

When the sun sets they still drown in each other, Jay hooking his index fingers into Carlos’s belt loops and pulling him to bed, reducing him to a shuddering mess under his mouth, his hands. Sometimes the light is decidedly off, other times he seems like he forgets about it. It’s another thing that’s changed, another choice he’s made.

As Jay holds Carlos’s face between his palms and kisses him breathless, Carlos wonders distantly if the storm of this will ever ebb into something more manageable. If the novelty of Jay’s eyes all heat-drunk and dark and staring down at him like he can’t get enough will go away, or at least stop making him so dizzy, so stupid and lost and in love.

Jay lets him go for a second to push his shirt up around his neck, mouthing messily across his sternum, his ribs, leaving teeth marks as far up as the flicker of tendons in his throat. “Someone could see those,” Carlos mumbles, smiling recklessly into Jay’s hair, bucking under him with clumsy thrusts of his hips. _This is what you do to me_ , he thinks, head lolling back so Jay can keep sucking at his pulse, hard and hungry and aching. _This is how we are now._

Jay shrugs, a gentle roll to his shoulders like this is nothing, nothing at all. “Let them,” he says, sitting back for a moment and rubbing the tips of his fingers across the smattering of red and purple he’s left all over Carlos’s neck. “I don’t even care anymore.” 

“Oh yeah?” Carlos raises an eyebrows. 

Jay grins, flicking at Carlos’s arm with a thumb and forefinger. “Yeah.” 

“Come here,” Carlos says, grabbing a fistful of Jay’s hair and tugging him down by it. “You know, we don’t have to tell anyone. I don’t even care about that, really, you don’t have to prove any-”

“Hey,” Jay says darkly, quieting Carlos with a heavy, deliberate kiss to the corner of his mouth. “It’s not that. Just. I’m so sick of stopping myself from marking you up, from kissing you everywhere. So sick of _worrying_ , of the whole game. Now that we’re here, that our parents aren’t gonna kill us for choosing good and letting them down...it’s just...nothing that used to matter feels like it matters much anymore,” he shrugs again, gaze dropping to Carlos’s chest, flushed and freckled and heaving. Then he smiles, chewing on his lip a little nervously. “It’s not easier to love you here, it’s just. Easier to let myself. Or something.” 

Carlos’s heart kind of stops, stuttering to a shocked stillness under Jay’s lips before it thuds to life again, newly frantic. “You love me?” 

“Duh,” Jay says, biting him hard above his left nipple, making him yelp then dissolve into weak, breathy laughter. “What did you think I felt? Why else would I be so fucked up over you?” 

“I dunno,” Carlos murmurs, sliding his hand down Jay’s bicep, digging his fingers into the flickering planes of muscle, tight and hard as he holds himself up over Carlos. “That I was was like, some dog-eared page in your life. I thought you wanted to write some nice story about you and a girl, and I was just going to be a folded down corner in the back you went to reread sometimes. Something you turned back to, when you were lonely or drunk, but not the happy ending. Didn’t think we even _got_ happy endings, you know?” 

“Carlos,” Jay mumbles, two spots of hectic red coloring his cheeks, hair a mess of knots and tangles from Carlos’s fingers and he looks so _happy_ , so bright-eyed flushed, _good_. The most beautiful boy in all of Auradon, unforgettable, and Carlos thinks about how stupid he was to think anything could ever change that. “Carlos,” Jay says again, shaking his head. “I _told_ you that it was always you. The whole story, every stupid page. Remember I _said_ it was you I thought about when I imagined myself happy, in the future, right?” 

Carlos shrugs, totally incapable of keeping the huge, too-wide smile off his face, all laugh-lines, all teeth. “You said it was me you thought about when you jacked off.” 

“Well yeah,” Jay admits, rubbing his cheek against Carlos’s chest to hide his eyes. “But also, the other thing.” 

Carlos tilts Jay’s jaw up so that he can look at him, all his choices and all his beauty, all the hidden goodness like a gemstone glinting from beneath its layer of earth. He thumbs over his lips and mumbles, “I’m glad we’re here.” _I’m glad you’re the one I’m stuck with,_ he thinks, knowing he won’t be able to get it out of his throat, which is tight and hot and flickering closed with overwhelm. 

Jay leans forward on his elbows and kisses Carlos hard and deep, the light from the bedside lamp reflecting off the sheen of his hair like some kind of promise. “Me too,” he says into the kiss, squinting hard in the light as he pulls away, smiling a full smile this time, bright and wide and stupid and real. “Me too.” 

\---


End file.
